The Valley
by ForeverFalling86
Summary: Movieverse AU: It was like Fury had said: William Brandt was dead. And Clint Barton had risen from his ashes. A story of love, whether lost or found. Everyone's got their fairytale ending. It's just that they can't all come true.
1. The Man You Were Made to Be

Phil had never been the fidgeting type. He'd been that child who could look his mother square in the eyes and swear up and down that the sky was purple, the grass was blue, and he most _certainly _hadn't broken that lamp, it had definitely been the dog— without even a slip of a grin or the nervous shuffle of a sock covered foot against the hardwood floor. He'd been the Private who could stare down his CO and report what had gone wrong without breaking out into a cold sweat, and later he'd been the black ops agent who could lay in wait for hours for his target to act without even a single adrenaline fuelled tremble.

His ability to remain calm and collected under stress was one of the reasons he was so good at his job. But for whatever reason, today that didn't stop him from tapping his pen against the cold wooden top of his desk or the fingers on his hand from drumming a steady rhythm along the arm of his chair. He glanced down at the paperwork in front of him before leaning back again, trying to figure out what exactly this sort of situation called for.

Therapy probably. Lots and _lots _of therapy. But something told him Barton wouldn't exactly be willing to 'share his feelings' and whatever else the SHIELD psychiatrists usually asked of a patient in their care. At this point it might be better to just give him a bow, a few quivers of arrows and set loose in a remote forest to let him work things out for himself. Shooting things could help.

Truth be told, Phil had seen this coming from a mile away. The day Fury had sat him down and told him the plan, he'd known that this would somehow blow up in their faces. Plans that involved lying to a person about their lives, who they were and who they'd been had a way of doing that. In their paranoia they might've made a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy out of it, but that was life sometimes wasn't it? Phil sighed as he ran a hand over his tired eyes, trying to figure out what exactly he should put in the Incident Report. He wasn't even sure how this whole thing had started. Well, he supposed that was a bit of a lie. It was more the fact that he had no idea how _he'd _been dragged into it and given the responsibility of overseeing the project. How to put it to paper seemed to be a looming problem, but at least he knew where to begin. Yes, he knew exactly how they'd wound up in this shit show. In fact, it had started a little something like this:

* * *

><p>Believe it or not, not all of the security agencies within the United States had the same 'back off this is my territory. <em>Mine<em>.' reaction as the FBI or CIA. Not everything was a glorified pissing contest. Some actually felt the need to promote interagency cooperation and luckily (or unluckily depending on who you were asking) enough, SHEILD was one of them. Therefore, it was not out of the ordinary to find Director Fury visiting the other agencies' headquarters and talking shop for a few hours once a month in order to open communications and encourage the flow of information. After all, at the end of the day they all worked for the same side, jurisdiction be damned.

So it was a decidedly normal day when Fury had been sitting in the new Secretary of the Impossible Missions Force's office talking over a table covered in files, mugs of coffee and a plate of Danishes when things were set in motion.

"So, this one was yours?" The Director asked as he flipped through the pages of a file marked Top Secret boldly in red.

The Secretary nodded, a worn look slipping onto his face. "Bit of a botch up really."

"I wouldn't say that," Fury disagreed. "It went well enough from what we could tell over at SHIELD. I'm sure MI6 wouldn't complain either."

"Then I'll correct myself and say a bit of a butch up for _us_. We lost one of our best," the other man sighed, passing over a thick blue personnel file. "We've got him in a secure location and sedated at the moment. We've still got to decide what's to be done with him."

Fury opened the file of one Clint Barton and was impressed by what he found: unbelievably high scores in marksmanship, true long-term eidetic memory, top marks in hand to hand and over all fitness, as well as a wide variety of skills that ranged from singing to fencing and every reference read like the officer was restraining themselves from dotting their i's with hearts out of sheer love and admiration. There wasn't a single complaint to Barton's name nor a hint or disciplinary action.

"As far as I know, only one woman was ever said to have had a true eidetic memory, and even that was controversial," he noted as he read on. It was definitely one of the best CV's he'd ever laid eyes upon and given the number that passed over his desk on a weekly basis, that was saying something. This was the kind of man anyone would kill to have in their arsenal.

"Brandt is indeed one of a kind," the Secretary smiled, eyes glassy as he picked up his coffee. "A very well kept secret."

"Brandt?" Fury asked, double checking the file to make sure he hadn't misread it. "Says here his name is Barton."

"There's a note somewhere in there about it. Changed it; my predecessor must have known why. Sentimental reasons I'm sure. Goes by William Brandt now. Or well, he _did_," he corrected himself. "But it was never actually legally done and therefore we're required to file him under Barton instead of Brandt."

"He must've been a great agent. His record is exemplary," Fury said glancing from one page to the next. "Even with this screw up in Croatia."

"He still _is_ a great agent," the Secretary growled, looking frustrated beyond anything else as he fingered the handle of his mug but ignored the Danish he'd set aside to eat earlier. "Sadly, that's not what we need. We have dozens of 'great agents', what we needed was a great _analyst_. And that's exactly what we've lost. The head trauma was...extensive to say the least."

"How bad?" Fury asked, tossing the file aside as he leaned back in his seat.

"_Retrograde Amnesia_," The Secretary spat, as if the words offended his senses. "It's like something out of those dramas my wife watches," he added flippantly. "Remembers his real name, his brother, his childhood, enlisting in the army, training. His reflexes are still topnotch and he can shoot like goddamn Robin Hood. But anything within the span of his working for us is gone. All the information we needed from him is gone," the Secretary said, his fingers tapping against the glass tabletop as he stared out of the nearest window. "And there are already hints of the trauma having affected his impulse control and personality."

Both things that could be dealt with through proper handling and therapy if one was willing to spare the time, Fury noted. But then again, the IMF had always been impractical at the best of times.

"Is a full recovery possible?"

"Doctors say he'll gain some of the memories back, but more along the lines of his address, maybe his new name, his friends' names and such. Nothing useful."

"What about his ability to retain memories," Fury asked, an idea beginning to nig at the back of his mind.

"One damn person in the entire world with an eidetic memory, and he loses because of a blow to the head!" the Secretary said, a laugh of disbelief slipping out before he could choke it down. "A resource like that should've never been allowed out in the field."

"Surely his other skills would more than make up for—

"We _have _highly skilled agents Director Fury. Some of the best in the world. At this point, he's superfluous, and with the mental complications he'll become a liability more than anything else," the man sighed and tiredly ran a hand over his chin. "Frankly, I don't know what to do with him. It's all such a bloody waste."

Fury frowned for a moment before a grin cracked across his face and the Secretary at least had the decency to look unsettled, because a grin from Fury usually promised pain or something equally unpleasant. But, luckily enough for him, no one could say that Fury didn't know how to take advantage of a situation when it was presented to him.

"Well, if you've got no use for him," the Director trailed off, the grin still firmly in place as he stood. He turned to the suit clad agents that were standing guard by the door.

"Wrap him up Gentlemen. I'll take him."

* * *

><p>Titles are from Mumford &amp; Sons' song The Cave. I don't own either Avengers or MI:4.<p> 


	2. I Know My Call, Despite My Faults

Coulson looked from the unconscious man strapped to a gurney that they were unloading from the helicopter to Fury and then back again. This wasn't the first time the Director had found a pet and brought it home without permission. A trip to Russia had recently resulted in having to find English lessons for one very, _very _scary redhead who enjoyed pulling sharp objects from seemingly nowhere in a way that made it impossible to determine if she was trying to stab you or offering to help you cut your chicken (the cafeteria tended to overcook their food until it was more paperweight than edible). Most agents made a tactical retreat (fled) before they could find out.

"Sir, not _again_. You can't possibly mean to –

"Take a look at his file, Agent. And then try and tell me I made the wrong call."

The manic look on the Director's face was one that haunted Phil's nightmares and stared out at him from darkened back alleys because nothing good had ever come of it. Well, maybe good in the Utilitarian sense of the word, but certainly not good for _him_. Greatest good for the greatest number be damned. He put up with enough shit as it was.

Phil barely managed to catch hold of the file that was suddenly thrust into his arms and he had to almost scramble to stop the pages from getting torn away by the wind coming from the rotating blades of the helicopter. The doctors from Medical were already wheeling away SHIELD's newest acquisition so he followed after his boss, skimming the information as he did.

"Sir, this man has suffered severe brain trauma. To be frank, he's obviously—

"Keep reading," Fury said simply as they ducked through the nearest door into the warmth of Headquarters. "If he was of no use to us, I wouldn't have taken him off the IMF's hands. Take a look at his test scores and tell me he's broken. His scores are—

"Off the charts," Phil breathed in disbelief as he reread them for a third time. "I've never seen scores like this in marksmanship. They're—

"Unprecedented," Fury laughed as they walked through the halls, his black trench swishing along behind him as lower level agents dashed out of their way. "I know. The IMF doesn't know what they'll be missing. They've always been blinded by theatrics over there. But we don't need another goddamn Ethan Golden Boy Hunt strutting around the world calling attention to us. We need someone understated, someone who can stick to the shadows but get the job done. We need –

"Him," Phil finished, shaking his head as he tucked the pages back into the brown folder. "We need Clint Barton."

Fury smiled as he took a seat behind his desk, looking extremely pleased with himself as he laughed. "Exactly. Make it happen Coulson."

"Yes sir."

At least this one spoke English.

When Fury said: make it happen, the even if you have to move heaven and earth, raise the dead, or almost kill yourself was left unsaid. But it was rather heavily implied. So with file in hand Coulson set about to doing just that. He strode down to Medical like a man on a mission and when he arrived tried to ignore how pale and drawn their newest agent looked against the white of the sheets as the doctors worked on unstrapping him and transferring him to a new bed.

"What's his status?"

One of the doctors, Alison if he recalled correctly, looked away from hooking Barton up to an EKG. "He's heavily sedated, but give us the word and we can have him up in virtually no time. He was in a medically induced coma for a few days because of the trauma." She grabbed a clipboard that was settled by the foot of the bed. "Records say that he was alert and responsive when they brought him back but it was decided to sedate him to keep him under wraps and allow some time for recovery. He's basically been under for three weeks, so getting him up sooner rather than later would be best."

Coulson nodded, jotting this down in the margins of the file. "How bad is the damage?"

Dr. Alison consulted the clipboard again. "Rather severe, but I've seen guys come back from worse than this. Short term memories are shot, but long term ones seem basically intact. The more recent tests are more promising though. Reflexes all check out, tests to determine his cognitive function came back almost the same as his entrance results. His IQ test results took a hit, but with all the drugs they had him that's hardly surprising. He had a bit of aphasia but that tapered off while they were testing, so I suppose he'd be fine by now. He's a bit of a fixer upper," she smiled, setting the board aside. "But Fury's got himself a good guy here. Easy on the eyes too," she added with a wink.

Phil decided to ignore that comment because otherwise he'd have to give a lecture on sexual harassment in the workplace and he really didn't have the time. Barton's fitness levels were definitely above average judging by his build, his former line of work, and the records the IMF kept. But, they weren't up to SHEILD's Special Agent requirements, which was surely what Fury had in mind for him just like the Russian he'd snapped up from the KGB last month. Depending on how they spun it to Barton...the coma could work as a good cover story.

"What's the likelihood of him regaining his memories?"

"Well," she started, considering it for a moment as she glanced at her patient. "With this type of trauma and going by the MRI and CT scans? I'd say the information that the IMF wanted is long gone. Flashes are likely, but I doubt he'll ever entirely be able to put together what his life has been like unless someone deliberately helps him bridge the gaps, and even then it'd be incomplete at best. Chances are he'll never fully recover them, but with the proper therapy he'd be able to get some semblance of what it is he's missing. But, if the IMF's rid of him, I don't suppose they want him remembering classified information, do they?" she asked sceptically.

"No, at this point...its best that he doesn't remember. If not for his own sake, then for the sake of the security of the IMF and interagency cooperation. They'd most likely demand his return if he began to remember the information they need."

"And Fury won't want to let go of his newest pet," Alison laughed. "Right. I get it. I'll tell the therapists to cancel their plans then, shall I?"

"That would be best. I'd like him up and running by next week. Romanov is set to start her training then. I think—

"Pairing them off could be good," she nodded. "He'll need some support and competition will do wonders for their training. They'll both be new- whether or not they know it. I'll have him ready to go, sir."

Coulson nodded before slipping out of the room, an idea forming in his head. _Whether or not they know it_... Well, it had potential, he'd give it that.

* * *

><p>While for Fury it'd started in an office that few people were supposed to know existed, and for Phil it had started on the landing pad outside of SHIELD headquarters, for Ethan, The Barton Situation as people would eventually begin referring to it as, capitalization included, began in London when a wall had exploded and showered them with rubble ranging from the size of pebbles to Terriers. For him it began with watching as Will passed out in a pool of his own blood, half of his head obscured in a wash of red.<p>

It had begun with Will's blood slicked hand clutched in his. With panic and worry as their backup arrived and whisked Will off to somewhere he couldn't follow. For him it began with the heartbreak that was the IMF raiding their apartment and incinerating all of Will's possessions and in the process, the life they'd built together. For Ethan Hunt, The Situation began with the dirty word that was _disavowed_. For Ethan Hunt, it began with the gut wrenching pain- the utter devastation of knowing Will- his other half- his _better_ half- had died surrounded by agents who were there out of duty and not of love. Who knew his ID number and blood type, but not the way he sounded when he laughed or the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. It'd begun with knowing that he wouldn't get a chance to say goodbye, a chance to hold his hand one last time.

So while Clint Barton opened his eyes to the white ceiling of a SHEILD infirmary, Ethan Hunt closed his to the sight of the empty half of the bed that William Brandt had once occupied and the shambles that had once been their life.


	3. The Noose Around Your Neck

Unlike most things in Ethan's life, falling in love with William Brandt had been easy and slow. He'd been in over his head before he'd even realized it and hadn't felt the need to come up for air. Theirs was not a whirlwind romance. It'd been filled with late nights in corner cafes in London, or sitting together in front of the fire watching an old movie in Germany. It'd been easy smiles, even easier kisses, and dancing in the kitchen as the fridge hummed along with the old radio that liked to turn on all on its own. It'd been going for jogs on the boardwalk or joining basketball games in the park.

Ethan might've even called it an average sort of love story if not for the missions to Albania, Czech or some Middle Eastern nation and all the firefights, IEDs, episodes of PTSD and deadly weapons hidden under pillows, tables, couches and everything in between. And Ethan had loved every minute of it.

* * *

><p>"I've been out for <em>how<em> long?"

The doctor gave him a sympathetic look as she repeated herself for what must've been the seventh time. "Six months Mr. Barton. You're very fortunate to be awake and alert."

Clint swallowed loudly as he struggled to process what he was being told. Six months...wasn't that long in the grand scheme of things. The real issue he was having was with trying to remember anything that she was talking about. In his recallable life- which was admittedly pretty short at the moment, he'd never forgotten anything of importance to him. Not once. He could still remember his middle school locker combination. He could remember his mother's face in perfect detail; he had her eyes and lips. There were a few things he'd been learned to be proud of as a kid, his aim and his memory.

"You were in an accident overseas on a mission with SHIELD. You suffered severe brain trauma after taking a blow to the head."

What?..._What_?

"I- I can't remember any of this." He said, wracking his brain, not used to having to struggle to remember anything.

"Yes, well, that's to be expected." The smile made a reappearance and it was really starting to piss him off because _as if_ she understood what he was going through. He doubted she'd ever been told that she couldn't remember four years of her life in which she'd apparently been recruited by some Men in Black wannabes and traveled to places like Sri Lanka in order to apparently get bashed over the head with rocks the size of footballs.

"I understand this must be disorienting, especially with the effect your injury had on your ability to retain new memories.

He gave her a look that obviously questioned her intelligence and forced himself to sit up. His arms ached a bit under the strain, but he could still feel the strength in his muscles which was more than he'd dared to hope for after six months of being static. His thoughts must have played across his face because the doctor smiled and called his attention back to her.

"We're very pleased with the lack of deterioration your muscles have suffered. We have a wonderful physical therapy unit here, so you can thank them for that," she said as she stood from the chair she'd been occupying and began gathering up her notes.

Clint wondered if that actually made any sense as he eyed her dubiously.

"Obviously you're still not up to your normal standards so it's been recommended that you rest for a few days and then undergo some basic training to get you back up to snuff before being reinstated."

"Re- reinstated?" he asked, twisting the sheets nervously in his hands. "So soon? I- I don't even know what the hell you guys do!" He couldn't even remember what that long as hell acronym that she'd mentioned meant. And it stung a little more than it probably should have. He could be dead or paralyzed and instead he'd just lost a few years and his eidetic memory. He should be thankful if anything, but instead it made his heart ache.

"Don't worry," Dr. Alison said with an idle wave of her hand as she made her way to the door. "We take care of our own here."

"It's not so much the taking care part, as much as the understanding what the hell this place is that I'm worried about. This _really_doesn't seem like a good—

She cut him off with another wave, her other arm clutching her folders to her side. "You'll be just fine. We were very worried about you, agent," she added.

Were these people crazy? Did common sense die while he'd been under?

"It'll be good to see you wandering the halls again." And then she was gone leaving behind one _very_ confused patient in her wake.

Clint sat quietly for a moment trying to process what he'd just been told before giving up because _clearly_ this shit made no sense. And the doctor might blame that on brain damage or residual side effects from various drugs, but Clint was pretty damn sure this would seem crazy to anyone sane enough to call Bullshit when they saw it.

Okay, coma, he got that. Straight forward enough. Having the last four years wiped? Sure, severe blunt force trauma tended to screw some things up. So yeah, he got that too even if it was like something out a deranged soap opera. But if it'd been six months since his accident, why the hell was there still bandages on his head? And what was with the huge rush to get reinstated? And- And _wandering the halls_? He did not _wander_. He wasn't the wandering type. He might not know the date, and he might not know what the hell had happened to him over the past four years, but if nothing else he knew what kind of man he was and he _did not wander_.

The world swirled around him for a moment and Clint had to wonder what exactly they were feeding into his veins as he lay back down until his vision stopped swimming. Shouldn't they be running tests or something? He tried to remember the last thing he'd ever learned about coma patients with amnesia, but while he'd always liked Sandra Bullock (she was totally hot in that everyday woman kind of way), he doubted While You Were Sleeping was medically relevant to his case, let alone accurate. And that had been fake amnesia anyway. Actually...Chinese food sounded _amazing_

He reached over and ripped his IV out with barely a second thought, trying to get back on track. Alright._Focus_. Coma. Retrograde Amnesia. Spring Ro— _holy shit_ he was so hungry—He glanced up at the IV bag, eyeing the innocent looking liquid dubiously. Stupid doctor could have at least unhooked him from the stuff before trying to explain something more complicated than Checkers. Clearly she wasn't the brightest bulb.

Wandering. Yeah, right. Wandering...cognate with the German verb wandern- He knew _German_? When did _that_ happen?— Wander— Maybe...maybe he _had_ been the wandering type? He tried to recall the effects of a traumatic brain injury and was pleasantly surprised to find that they easily came to him. Even if his ability to retain new information was shot, his long term was apparently in good working order. Personality changes were common... as were confusion and disorientation.

Well, he was definitely confused as fuck, and disoriented didn't even begin to cover it. Clint reached over to press the call button but suddenly thought better of it. He had some serious questions to ask and apparently his wayward doctor was going to be of no help whatsoever, so why the hell would the nurses be any different? With a breath to steady himself Clint once again forced himself into a sitting position and swiftly swung his legs over the side of the bed.

"Oh shit," he rasped, clutching at his aching head and trying to blink away the black spots in his vision.

Alright, so maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all.

Once he was sure he wasn't going to pass out he reached over and turned off the EKG before disconnecting it. He didn't need half the damn ward to come running because the machine thought he was coding.

SHIELD's newest agent glanced around the room, taking in the bland walls, ugly tiled floors, and noticing the lack of cards and flowers that would normally occupy someone's room.

"Well," he sighed, going to run a hand through his hair only to have his fingers scrape along gauze and bandages. "Guess I'm not exactly Mr. Popular."

He searched the cabinetry set into the wall next to the window and found a pair of track pants and a sweater both emblazoned with the crest of an Eagle taking flight that he'd come to associate with SHIELD. He tugged off the god-awful hospital gown he'd been wearing since he'd woken and carefully eased the sweater over his head, trying not to disturb the masterpiece that was wrapped around it. Getting the pants on was a task that almost toppled him over into a supply cart but in the end he managed to get them on without adding a concussion to his list of ailments.

Clint peeked out of his room, making sure that no one was coming before taking off down the hall. He hesitated in the doorway for a moment, something telling him he should stay put until he could balance properly and just gather information through the staff until then, however useless they were. But- but no! Screw it. If no one was going to tell him what was happening, he'd just have to figure it out for himself.

* * *

><p>"The doctors say he's confused, which it to be expected, but he should be ready to start training with Romanov on Monday."<p>

Fury nodded from behind his desk. "Good work, agent."

Coulson looked down to his file before shaking his head. He could already tell this was going to blow up in their faces, and probably sooner rather than later. He'd seen agents go on insane rampages for less than what Barton was being put through. They didn't need some nut killing anyone because they'd tried to mess with his head that had already seen better days.

"Sir, he's barely been up for six hours and he's already asking questions."

"Of course he's asking questions," the Director said dismissively as he resumed his work. "The man's been told he's been in a coma for six months and he's recently suffered a severe injury to the head. We can forgive him a little disorientation."

Phil sighed as he set the file down, wondering what the hell he must've done in his childhood to deserve a boss like Fury. "Sir, it's not so much disorientation as it is _disbelief_. The doctor was having some trouble convincing him that he'd ever worked for SHIELD, let alone been under for six months. And they're reporting some personality changes compared to the psychological profile the IMF gave us."

"After a hit like that, I'd be amazed if he came out the same man," Fury said. "But get inventive, this guy's not an idiot, with or without all that information he lost. Tell him his paranoia is a complication of the trauma. Common enough symptom."

"What if he begins remembering things?" Phil asked, trying to control his voice before it dipped anywhere close to a whine.

"I've got R&D working on something to help suppress any conflicting memories that would jeopardize the project. If he starts spilling out facts like some damn encyclopaedia and the IMF gets wind of it, they'll demand him back. If he remembers little things, that's fine, more for us. But if he starts recalling national secrets we'll have a problem. And I'm not going to spend all this time fixing him up out of the good of my heart. I'm not doing this so they can swoop in and grab him again. He's mine Coulson. And see that he knows it. I want him following my orders like a veteran agent within three weeks."

"Sir, wouldn't it just be easier to tell him that he worked for the IMF?" he asked, flipping open Barton's profile. "Tell him the IMF traded him off and that he's working for us now?"

"You've seen the profile Coulson," Fury said, finally looking up and gesturing towards the folder. "Says that he was close with his team and in a committed relationship- name redacted. That means he was probably having an intimate relationship with another agent. An agent who wouldn't be pleased with Brandt being traded off like some glorified hockey player. And if _you_ were in his situation and you were told all these things, what would you do? You'd hightail it out of here and go looking for things that are better off left alone. The Secretary of the IMF _disavowed_ him. You know how that works. He's dead. The IMF's William Brandt needed to disappear. And he did. Now, there's SHIELD's Clint Barton. This was a joint decision between the agencies. And that's that."

Phil finally relented with a nod and slipped the closed file under his arm. "Understood."

"And Coulson, I want all the information in his file from the IMF transplanted to an official SHIELD personnel one. Don't include his IMF service record but keep all the background info. I want no electronic record on our database of his career with them; IMF regulations. Destroy the hardcopy as well when you're done with it."

"Yes sir."

"Don't look so grim," Fury laughed, pounding away at the keys of his computer. "Things are looking up. The Avengers Initiative has been approved, funding is through the roof, and if Barton performs like his file says he can, Agent Romanov might just have another SHIELD operative to keep her company on the team."

Yes, looking up for you maybe, Phil couldn't help but think as he left. But in the mean time they'd ripped a man away from his life and were going to suppress his memories by using highly illegal drugs. All in a day's work really.

* * *

><p>Now, Clint was no doctor. Give him a bottle of whiskey, a sharp needle and some string and he could stitch up just about anything (who knew learning how to sew up the holes in his socks as a kid would come in so handy?), but other than that, anything medical was generally out of his depth. Give him physics any day and he'd <em>blow your fucking mind<em> but ask him to explain cellular respiration and you wouldn't get much out of him other than what someone with a good memory could learn from watching an episode of House. Having an eidetic memory was great, but knowing about it didn't mean you _understood_ it. And anatomy had never been his strong suit.

But looking at the state of his head beneath the layers of gauze and bandages, he didn't have to be Hugh Laurie to figure out it most_definitely_hadn't been six months since his accident. The staples looked just about ready to be removed which didn't fit in with the timeline he'd been given. They should've been out months ago if what the doctor had said was true.

He peered out of the bathroom he'd ducked into and was happy to see that the hallway was deserted, meaning that no one had noticed he'd escaped from his room- for a supposedly secret spook base, security here was _shit_. Well, not that he was complaining about that. He wasn't entirely sure where the hell he was going, but he figured that if worse came to worse he'd climb out the nearest window. He was only on the second floor. It would be an easy enough jump.

Coulson was tempted to ignore his vibrating phone and simply return to his downloaded episode of Supernanny, but the last time he'd ignored a message half of New York had almost been blown up and although no one had ever called him on it...So he gave in and checked his newest message, barely tearing his eyes away from the computer screen as he unlocked his phone. And what he found waiting for him was far from pleasing.

"Oh shit," he swore, setting down his coffee and taking off down the hall in the direction of Medical without even taking the time to click pause.

He found a few nurses and Dr. Alison waiting for him in front of Barton's empty room, all of them looking a little shamefaced.

"How," he growled, taking in the sight of the empty bed and ditched dressing gown. "Did you manage to lose track of him, when he's the only patient on this side of the wing?"

One of them looked ready to protest but Phil was already storming off to track down Fury's pain in the ass agent. He looked back to see them still standing around the door and he ground to a halt.

"Well? Are you just going to stand there while one of the most dangerous men in the world wanders around unsupervised while suffering from severe brain trauma?"

That got them all scrambling to check the adjacent rooms so he took off down the hall again, checking rooms as he went. This was _great_. Just great.

Meanwhile, Clint could hear personnel jogging through the halls, apparently finally having figured out that he was gone. Or, about to be gone. Seriously, he stood by his opinion about security being absolute shit. Finding a computer had been almost too easy and whoever's office it was had simply left the PC to idle instead of logging off and shutting down- a rookie mistake. A press of My Location on Google Maps had told him he was in New York City and he'd even had time to figure out that Chang's Chinese Restaurant was four blocks south and one block west (the review gave it two and a half stars out of four. Apparently the ambiance was great, but the service left something to be desired).

Considering the last place he remembered being was back in his apartment in Iowa, he'd come a pretty long way.

Clint rifled through the desk drawer, finding a gift Visa clearly left over from a Christmas present and shoved it into his pocket along with a stray subway token. The footsteps were getting louder so he pushed aside a flower pot, wrenched open the window and easily punched out the screen, watching as it fluttered to the ground before hoisting himself onto the sill. His shoulders ached under the strain but he ignored it as he swung his leg over, hissing at the sting of the cold metal ledge against the bare arch of his foot.

A parking lot was situated below him and he wasn't looking forward to the impact, but at this point he really just needed to get away. He had no idea what the hell was going on, but he'd rather not be around to find out. In his experience (and who knows? He probably had even more by now) it was always best to run first, ask questions later. From a safe distance. Preferably with a gun. Clint was about to push off when a voice suddenly stopped him.

"Barton, wait!"

He turned to find a man decked out in a suit and sporting the beginnings of a receding hairline standing in the doorway, looking more than a little harassed.

"Come back in, you don't want to do this," the man said calmly. Clint frowned for a moment, glancing out the window before turning back. No, no, he was pretty sure he did actually. And he must've spoken aloud because the next thing he knew Mr. Suit was speaking again.

"No, you don't," he said, as he began approaching slowly, his hands held out in front of him as if ready to grab Clint if he made a move to jump. "You're just confused."

"I'm thinking pretty clearly thanks," Clint growled, ignoring how the cold metal of the ledge was beginning to numb his toes.

The man shook his head and looked hesitant to move any closer in case he decided to do it. "Come back inside. Let's talk about this."

Clint blinked for a moment before it clicked. Agent K over there thought he was trying to off himself. "This is only the second floor, man. If I wanted to kill myself I'd go off the roof."

Death definitely wasn't on his To Do list. Finding a Chinese takeout place on the other hand? That was pretty damn close to the top. He sort of vaguely wondered if brain trauma caused cravings because holy shit, he seriously _needed_ Spring Rolls something desperate. And noodles.

"Be that as it may," the other said quietly calling Clint back to the situation at hand. His voice might've even been soothing if he hadn't looked just a little on the wrong side of crazy. "Come back inside so we can talk this through. Come on, you know me."

"You see actually, I don't." And wasn't that just his whole damn problem in a nutshell?

"You do."

"I don't!" Were they _really_ going to do this? Bicker like school kids while he hung out a window and K looked ready to pull the stun gun that was holstered at his hip? What's his face didn't have to put up with this shit in While You Were Sleeping, that's for sure. Things were shaping up to look a lot more like the Bourne trilogy than a Sandra Bullock rom-com.

"But you used to, Clint. Try to remember. Phil Coulson. I'm Agent Coulson. You can trust me."

Clint stared at the man, giving him a quick once over. He didn't seem like the joking type, but then again neither did Agent K, and he turned out to be fucking hilarious.

He sighed, but didn't move from the sill. "_Trust_?" he asked incredulously. "All you guys have done is lie to me since I woke up."

Phil closed the gap between them by a few steps. "Clint, we haven't been lying to you. You're just confused. The drugs and the trauma are messing with you. Think about it. What's one of the most common side effects of a traumatic brain injury?"

Paranoia. But no— he wasn't being paranoid. What they told him didn't make any sense.

"If I've been in a coma for six months, why the hell do I still have staples in my head?" he snapped. "They should've been taken out months ago!"

"You needed secondary surgery to remove skull fragments that had been missed in the initial procedure," Phil reassured him as he came ever closer. "We're not trying to trick you; we're trying to help you get back on your feet as quickly as we can. You've been out a long time, Clint. We thought that would be what you wanted. Just think it through," Phil said softly, his hand reaching out to grip his shoulder. "This is just the trauma talking. You can get passed it. Try to remember. I'm your superior officer; I'm your friend- we all are."

If he wasn't so positive this was some sort of Jedi mind-fuck, he might've actually been touched that Agent K was trying so hard to reach out to him. But yeah, he'd seen Star Wars, so screw that.

Clint shook off the hand on his shoulder, glaring at Phil Coulson with all his considerable might. "Look, you spouting bullshit hasn't gotten you anywhere, so why don't you just cut the crap and tell me what's really going on?"

Phil winced slightly and took a step back so that there was a respectable distance between them. He looked uncomfortable for a moment before he gave a sigh and shrugged. "Alright, the friend thing wasn't true. We've never gotten on. Truthfully, you drive me up the wall."

Clint thought for a moment, trying to place what was wrong with that statement. He didn't normally drive people up walls...did he? No, people liked him. Commanding officers respected him and his squad mates wanted to _be_him.

"You're annoying, cocky, you play tricks on the other agents, and you never submit your paperwork on time, if ever. So forgive me for not being your biggest fan," Phil continued, gaining momentum. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to let you jump out of that window when you're clearly disturbed and not thinking clearly."

"I..," Clint faltered, unsure and he felt the beginnings of panic start to rise in his chest, pressing down on his lungs and constricting his throat. His tongue felt swollen in his mouth and everything suddenly sounded so far away, muffled by the ringing in his ears. This man, Phil Coulson- he sounded _so sure_. But...but he wasn't really like that was he? No- no, he couldn't be...but...

"I don't know. I- I don't remember."

He couldn't seem to catch his breath, his lungs working uselessly as his heart began stuttering in his chest, tattooing an uneven rhythm against his ribs. Coulson was suddenly holding him up by the shoulders, supporting his weight as his body seemed to shut down.

"I've got you," he grunted, pulling Clint off the sill and helping him get his feet under him.

"_Fuck_. I can't remember!"

"It's alright."

"No it's not!" he yelled, beginning to border on hysteric. He couldn't- Oh God, he couldn't breathe. _He couldn't fucking breathe!_

"Calm down," Coulson told him as he sunk them both to the floor to lean against the wall. "Deep breaths."

What the hell was he going to do if he couldn't even remember someone like Phil, who apparently knew him so well? If he couldn't even force air into his lungs? Everything was a blank- there wasn't even a trace of SHIELD in his head. All he knew was that the last thing he vaguely remembered was coming back from his latest tour and he'd thought maybe he'd get a dog- and holy shit he didn't even know- did he have a dog? Was it off starving in some apartment he'd forgotten all about?

He could vaguely hear Phil talking to him, saying, "Breathe Clint. Breathe." And "Can I get some help in here?"

It suddenly hit him like a train. Or maybe like that rock that had started this all. Sudden. Blunt. He could feel it now; that distorted pain and longing that came with the realization that an integral part of you was missing. How hadn't he noticed before? _I need him_, he thought desperately. I need him. He needed him and he wasn't here.

"Need who Clint?"

Who? He didn't— He couldn't—He needed him in the same way he needed the air that his lungs just wouldn't take in. It was desperate and painful and all consuming.

Clint clawed at the sides of his head, ignoring how his ragged nails caught along the staples that perforated his scalp and tore them loose. He could hear Phil swearing and suddenly his hands were being held tight against his chest. He could feel the warmth of his blood as it rolled down the back of his neck and pooled in the shell of his ear.

"I need him."

He could feel it on the edge of his mind- almost- _almost_. Dancing on the precipice of recognition. He felt a small pinch on his arm, felt the coldness crawl through his veins as the sedative took hold and the darkness waiting at the edges of his vision crept forward until the entire world went black.

_Almost_.

* * *

><p>Phil breathed a sigh of relief as the nurses carried the unconscious Barton back to his room, leaving him to close the window. Someone was going to have to wipe up the blood that was smeared on the floor and wall later.<p>

He'd talked many people down during his years as an agent- hostage takers, suicidal agents, bombers, but he'd never quite had to deal with a situation like what he'd just went through. He was rather amazed, in a detached sort of way that he'd managed to talk Barton down by lying through his teeth like he had, but guilt had already reared its ugly head at the thought of how distressed the man had become.

He realized now that saying he'd have Barton ready for Monday might've been a tad ambitious of him.

He dusted off his pants as he climbed to his feet and reached out to lock the window. As he reached for the latch he noticed the dull red of Barton's blood coagulating under his fingernails, stark against the crisp white of the window frame. He quickly tried to scrape it out, only to push it deeper into his nail bed. With a huff he gave up, making note to grab some sanitizer from one of the nurses. He'd need a full report from Medical anyway before he went to Fury to tell him of the incident and hopefully adjust their timeline to something more realistic.

Dr. Allison was waiting for him with her clipboard firmly in a hand and a grim looking upon her face when he finally strode up, working the rubbing alcohol into his skin.

"How is he?"

"His behaviour isn't completely unexpected; paranoia, extreme anxiety and impulsiveness are common complications. And the stress of losing his eidetic memory wouldn't have helped either. That's something was a person really identifies with. It was an integral part of who he was and the way his brain functioned. We're putting him on some sedatives now to keep him calm. And hopefully in place," she added. "But we're going to have to restrain him until he wakes up and we can confirm that he's responding to them."

"Barton seemed to be trying to remember someone, he said that he needed them," Phil mentioned, eyeing the restraints the encircled Clint's wrists with distaste.

"Some recall is to be anticipated until R&D gets back to us," she admitted. "It might be best to closely monitor him and keep him calm until they can get him down there for some scans and run some tests."

Calm, Phil noted, was just another way to say drugged out of his mind.

"We're going to have to be careful for a few weeks regardless," she continued, checking the EKG after it let out a sharp blip and adjusting the settings before turning back to him. "Some patients develop psychological disorders after a traumatic brain injury, so we'll need to monitor him for symptoms."

Coulson once again adjusted his inner timeline and he could already tell Fury wasn't going to be pleased. But in the end, the Director would have no choice but to comply or risk his newest asset.

"Just have him ready as soon as possible."

"Will do."

It would take months rather than weeks for Clint Barton to be declared ready to begin training for service; two to be precise. Eventually R&D came through and was able to suppress almost all of the half remembered things plaguing Barton's mind until he could barely eat or sleep because of the ghosts dancing through his head; the muffled whispers in his ears.

As the saying goes: it's always darkest before the dawn, and things had certainly looked bleak for their newest agent before getting better. Clint's thrashing had rubbed his wrists and ankles raw against the restraints and there had been talk of a feeding tube being introduced for a few weeks because even if they managed to force him to eat, Barton tended to throw it right back up.

Acute Stress is what the doctor called it. Complete devastation was what Phil knew it to really be.

Every day he would check on their little Pet Project as Sitwell had taken to referring to Barton as over coffee every morning and every day after the drugs had been administered, he saw only improvement.

"We'll begin him on a regiment of twice daily doses," Dr. Alison had told him as she'd held up a container filled with a hundred small yellow pills. "This way we can stop the injections although they'll still be an option for rapid relief and for a longer lasting effect for missions, so we don't have to worry about him losing them and such."

Phil had nodded, his eyes skimming over the information sheet that R&D had sent up with the pills. The list of side effects had been daunting so say the least.

"Seizures?" He'd asked, trying to keep the worry from his voice. They couldn't have an agent have an epileptic episode of some kind mid-mission.  
>"Luckily enough most of those side effects would be due to a failure to take the proper dosages," the doctor had then assured him. "He'll need to take them regularly, and with food- they'll wreak havoc on his stomach otherwise."<p>

"Temporary psychosis?" He had hissed angrily, still going down the list.

Allison had nodded shortly at that, a grim look upon her face. "We're messing with a man's brain chemistry. I don't need to tell you how dangerous that can be. Any sudden changes in the chemicals in his brain, say the Gamma-Aminobutyric acid levels for instance. The pills adjust these to make him more calm, more susceptible and accepting to what we're telling him. If these were to have a sudden change because the dosage was wrong or he hadn't taken them, it could cause anything from seizures to psychosis due to extreme panic. Altering any chemical in the brain this drastically could result in similar side effects."

"And Fury approved this?" he'd asked, wondering just what the hell must've been going through the Director's mind.

"Yes sir."

And so they'd proceeded as planned. As the memories were suppressed, as the pure driving desperate _longing_ began to fade into the foggy haze along with everything that had been William Brandt, Clint Barton slowly became whole. The bruises under his grey blue eyes began to lighten and eventually the restraints were removed and the sedatives weaned away. The staples had been removed and his hair had grown back in, hiding the ugly pink scars that spanned the side of his head- the clear divide between what had been, and what now was.

So, almost three months after William Brandt's accident, Clint Barton was fully recovered and approved to begin training. He was smaller than Brandt had been, having lost a lot of weight and muscle mass, and he was sarcastic and reckless where Brandt had been nervous and careful. It was a startling difference when you compared the personality profiles on paper, and even starker in real life when faced down with what would soon become Clint's signature grin.

Like Fury had said all those months ago, William Brandt was dead. And Clint Barton had risen from his ashes.

* * *

><p>Jane gripped his hand comfortingly as he twisted the key and the lock slid home. Benji was waiting for them in the van while they finished up and not for the first time Ethan was grateful that out of all the teams he'd work with, this one had stuck.<p>

"Are you sure about this?"

Ethan nodded and bent down to pick up the duffle bag filled with his essentials. The rest of his things would be picked up by the movers the next day and shipped off to storage until he was ready to find another place for himself. The real estate agent he'd hired had assured him she'd have the place sold within a couple of weeks given the market, in demand location, and original hardwood floors. He'd signed all the paperwork so that she could accept whatever offer she deemed best without having to consult him first and wiped his hands clean of the place.

He'd tried, he really had, but he just couldn't stay there anymore. The IMF had taken Will's things; they were now long burned, their ashes scattered on the wind just like Will and it was almost eerie now.

"Yeah, I'm sure."

The apartment was empty without him there; lonely. Ethan didn't wake in the night, blindly reaching out across the covers, forgetting that Will wasn't there. He didn't turn around suddenly, thinking that he'd catch a glimpse of Will if he only turned fast enough. Will was gone. He wasn't in the walls. He wasn't in the dust motes that flickered in the sunlight on the edge of his vision. He wasn't in their room in the armchair they used to bicker over – never _fight_. Never _argue_. He wasn't sitting on the bench in the bay window reading. He wasn't there waiting for Ethan to come home to him.

And it hurt more than it should have.

He'd heard about people feeling their loved one's presence after their death. The lingering sensation of a touch, a tingle of warmth down their spine, the ghost of a breath in their ears; _something_. But instead when Ethan breathed _I love you_ into the stale air of the place that had once been theirs but was now just his, all he heard, all he felt, was his own echo, his own loneliness.

_I miss you. I love you. I'll never forget you. I love you. I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm sorry you were alone; that I wasn't there. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you_.

He chanted it like an endless prayer and sent out his love to the universe in hopes that somehow- somewhere Will would know. Would feel.

* * *

><p>So part of this story has been thoroughly Jossed. Alas. But, it wasn't as if this was ever really even close to canon. Anyway, I've been posting this to AO3, so in fact, there are 8 chapters already written and posted. Sadly, I forgot about posting here because I'm sort of hiding out on AO3 while trying to get past some writer's block for the stories I've been posting on FF. But don't tell anyone. Everyone has their secrets. Thank you for all your lovely reviews! I'll post the rest gradually over the next few days.<p>

ForeverFalling.


	4. Finding Strength In Pain

Given her job she'd generally been paired with men who liked to think they were chivalrous by telling her to stay back as they took care of things. They had the idea that she was being paired with them, when _they_ were being paired with _her_. It was a fine line, but there was an important distinction.

Despite what the others might say, Natasha had never let her partner die. Sometimes shit just happened. And sometimes people were just stupid to a point where it was lethal. So, within the first month of her new job she'd lost four partners in four missions. Someone had made a joke and before she knew it her codename was Black Widow.

When she'd found himself across from a still sickly looking Clint in the gym, she realized that she wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but it sure as hell hadn't been him. Then he'd snarked off about her being ex-KGB and of all the partners she'd had he was the only one who hadn't mentioned her looks or some shit that made her want to stick a knife between their ribs and slide it up into their still beating heart so they could see just how _beautiful_ she was was then.

The smirk had sealed the deal. And they'd never looked back.

* * *

><p>For Natasha, The Barton Situation started bright and early in the main gym on a Monday morning, and went a little something like this:<p>

"So everyone says you're some crazy ex-KGB agent who keeps letting her partners get killed."

"Everyone says that you're a head case ex-coma patient with no self-preservation instinct."

A grin. "Touché."

She decided she'd keep this one.

* * *

><p>If Fury had been smug when he'd first shown Phil Barton's file, he was downright unbearable when the diagnostic results came in after the first week of training.<p>

It'd been a little touch and go for a few weeks even after he'd been deemed fit to begin training and there'd been one incident where Clint had forgotten his morning dose because of early training and scared four junior agents into hysterically crying when he'd suddenly collapsed and begun convulsing.

But with that behind them, and Barton under strict instructions to take his medication without fail no matter what, things were coming along quite well.

"Perfect in marksmanship, and he was only behind Romanov in stealth and hand to hand by a margin of two points."

"He is impressive, sir," Coulson admitted freely, because really, Barton _was_ impressive. At least when he wasn't being a devious, cocky pain in the ass who seemed to enjoy instilling the fear of God in the junior agents who didn't yet understand that, no, Clint wasn't allowed to use them for a 'more realistic' moving target practice just because he out ranked them.

He'd only been permitted to wander the halls without someone from Medical shadowing him -and even then certain key agents had been advised to look out for him in case there was some sort of relapse or he had a fit- for the better part of two weeks and he'd already built himself a reputation that had everyone from the senior agents to the maintenance staff whispering like the insane gossips they all really were. And if no one had ever really heard of Clint Barton, a veteran agent of four years, before well, that was because he'd been mainly based at the London branch until his accident.

Romanov seemed more amused than anything by her new partner in the same way that someone might humour a small child or puppy, but the two got on well enough that Phil doubted Clint would be turning up dead anytime soon. She smirked at his snarky remarks and (dare he say) smiled whenever Barton shot at the junior agents- which happened quite frequently. It figured they'd bond over their violent tendencies. They spent hours playing a perverse game that involved looking at various scars on Clint's body and trying to determine how he'd come by them. He even got away with calling her Tasha, which another agent had recently tried and it'd resulted in him being on the receiving end of a punch to the face rather a smile.

So yes, things were going well aside from some blatant insubordination on Barton's part and Fury tended to literally cackle when reports of it came in because after Phil had told him about the incident with the window he'd almost cracked a rib going on about how he'd just 'created his own worst nightmare'. And sure enough, Barton had latched on to the lies Coulson had told him about his behaviour and his unstable personality had suddenly shifted to the basic profile he'd desperately bit out in an attempt to stop Fury's pet project from jumping and possibly breaking his legs on the cement. So yes, to his contempt and to the Director's endless amusement...he sort of _had_ created his own worst nightmare. But if his worst nightmare was a happy, devious, seemingly normal Clint Francis Barton...well, he could live with that.

* * *

><p>Clint had never met anyone like Natasha Romanov- or maybe he had. How the hell was he supposed to know? But in recallable memory, he could honestly say he'd never quite had a friend like her.<p>

Some of the other agents had a way of either being terrified of him (it was warranted) or looking at him with a sort of pity in their eyes that turned his mouth sour. Although he found pity could be easily turned into fear and annoyance with a well placed arrow. Speaking of which, he wasn't sure if he'd used a bow when working for SHIELD before but Natasha had handed him a compound bow one day after he'd told her about his life at the circus (small talk tended to stray towards his childhood because frankly, he still hadn't caught up on most of the pop culture he'd missed in the past four years, and apparently a lot could happen in that time. He was still trying to figure out if a Snooki was a chocolate bar or what) and since then he'd barely been able to put it down.

It was like an extension of his arm that helped to fill the void that still existed in him. The shrinks all said that using weaponry to emotionally sooth yourself wasn't healthy, but he'd just told them all to shove it. Besides, Natasha did it with her knives and guns and she passed all her psych evals with flying colours.

He still practiced with guns of course and he'd always loved to work with swords, no matter how impractical everyone told him they were and he regularly got his ass handed to him in the ring with Tasha as she scolded him for his mistakes in Russian- apparently he was fluent. Who knew?

Over all, he thought he was fitting in pretty well all things considered. He even got invited out to the bar after work with all the other agents and they seemed nice enough when they weren't screaming in terror as he jumped out of the drop ceiling, but Tasha was definitely his favourite and rightly so seeing as she was his partner. And probably his best friend.

He said probably because Tasha didn't like to label things and he'd never right out asked if she even_wanted_ to be his best friend... But in his head that was what he called her.

His therapist said having a friend would help him become well adjusted but when he'd told her that he'd befriended Natasha Romanov she'd said something along the lines of thinking that Natasha might not be the type of friend he needed right now. Seeing as this was the same woman who'd told him his tendency of practicing with his bow to calm himself wasn't healthy, he hadn't hesitated in telling her what he actually thought of her advice and where she could put it. Naturally Phil hadn't been pleased, and despite Clint's assurances that he was just fine without any kind of therapy he insisted that he continue to attend twice weekly sessions (which was actually an improvement. There'd been a time when he'd been seeing his therapist every six _hours_). But he hadn't been all that angry either.

If Natasha was his favourite, Phil Coulson was definitely a close second. Clint wouldn't admit to it under pain of torture, but he found Phil's steadiness and unending calm to be rather comforting and he'd find little reasons to camp out on the couch in his office even if it was just to nap for a few hours. And when a blanket had eventually appeared folded up on the one of the arms, neither of them ever mentioned it, but that didn't stop the soft smile that had spread across his face and Clint had wrapped himself in it.

If he was feeling particularly charitable Clint would even offer to give Phil a hand with the huge stacks of paperwork littering every flat surface in the room. He was actually quite efficient with it and found that he could fly through whole stacks of it in next to no time. He could generally remember incidents without fail and didn't have to look up various codes and call signs more than once. That was something he'd decided to keep to himself for now.

The doctors had all told him his eidetic memory was gone, but if he didn't know better he'd say he was slowly recovering it little by little. Time would tell if he ever really got back up to par. But, that didn't make doing paperwork any less boring.

Luckily enough Phil tended to reward him with coffee and a cookie if he helped. A part of him kind of resented being rewarded like some stupid little kid...but the cookies were apparently from this great bakery downtown and they were seriously to die for.

So as Winter bled into Spring and Spring into Summer, Clint slowly made a niche for himself within SHIELD and soon enough, he rarely stewed over the four years he'd lost. As a child, in school he'd been the circus freak and in the military he'd been the _ex_-circus freak who could remember everything, but here he _belonged_. He had real friends who would come by just to say hi instead of only coming around when they needed his help. He had Tasha who told him hilarious jokes and hid in the ceiling with him chatting about random things until they spotted their next victim. He had Phil who shared midnight dinners with him, just the two of them, over piles of paperwork and agent Woo and everyone else who dragged him out to bar nights, movie nights and everything in between. He went on missions and knew that Tasha had his back and him hers and when he came back he knew that Phil would be waiting for him with a cookie and a stack of TR-34s to fill out.

And even if on some nights as he lay in bed that lonely feeling, that feeling of knowing that something- _someone_- was missing, would sometimes rise up again and constrict his chest until he couldn't even imagine working up the will to actually get up in the morning, until the thought of smiling for everyone who thought he was okay made his heart ache, he still wouldn't have had it any other way.

He might not know what he was missing, but he sure as hell knew what he _did_ have. And he wouldn't give it up for the world.


	5. Refresh My Broken Mind

Clint must've been feeling decidedly charitable that day because he was sitting on his couch- well, it was Phil's couch technically. But Clint sat on it way more than he did. So it was his now. Anyway, so he'd been filling out a good old fashioned T-56 when he'd flipped to consult a dossier and his eyes had caught something he'd never heard before. And well, hiding the ceilings had a way of getting you quite a bit of information you weren't supposed to have. Frankly, there wasn't much that went on his SHIELD that he didn't know about. Which meant that when he _did_ happen across something that he had no prior knowledge of, he was sort of like a dog with a bone.

After years in the army working undercover ops and now his years at SHIELD spent doing a lot of the same, it was almost a reflex really. Hide. Listen. Gather. Record. Report. Kill target. Okay, well, the killing bit was optional sometimes. But basically he _knew_ shit. So why the hell didn't he know about this? He tried not to sound personally offended when he asked: "What the hell is the Avengers' Initiative?"

Phil barely looked up from his paperwork as he reached for his coffee. "Nothing important."

Clint glared over at him, scrutinizing. If he didn't know about it, it meant that no one could talk about it. "I think you're lying to me. In fact, I _know_ you are."

"Oh?" Phil could say more with a single raised eyebrow than most people could in their week. Clint would be lying if he said he didn't respect him for it.

He gave one last glare just for effect before looking down at the paper, his eyes scanning over the limited information a budget sheet could provide him with. Plenty of numbers sure, but not much else.

"Something 'not important' shouldn't have this kind of budget," he decided quickly enough, doing the math in his head to calculate the inflation because apparently some of this stuff dated back to World War II.

"This is _a lot_ of money," he whistled appreciatively as he finally came to a figure.

"Barton, leave it," Phil said shortly, clearly meaning business. But Clint had never been one to let sleeping dogs lie.

"Oh come on. I've worked with you for a year now," he whined, flinging his feet onto the coffee table as he sunk back into the surprisingly plush couch. "No one ever lets me know anything around here."

"You're handling highly classified papers right now," the agent said flatly as he sipped from his mug. Clint could recognize it as the one he'd give him for his birthday last month from the bold black typeface on it that read: World's Best Agent. He'd actually had to order away for it. SHIELD really needed to get a gift shop or something.

"Yeah, but nothing _good_. I don't really give a shit that Agent Woo's team sighted Banner in Tennessee—

"Language, Barton," Phil snapped, but Clint knew there was no real heat behind it.

"You're just upset because Fury's making you go deal with Stark," the archer pronounced as he tossed the paper aside and made a mental note to trample it on his way out just to be annoying. "While I get to go to Malaysia with Tasha."

"Yes," the other man sighed. "I'm obviously jealous of you being loaned out to CIA's Wetworks. That's the only possible explanation."

"Knew it," Clint grinned happily, ignoring the annoyed, yet obviously fond look Coulson was sending his way. He leaned down to grab the paper he'd dropped to hide the light blush dusting across his face.

"When do you leave?"

Clint looked up to find Phil still staring at him, his unfinished paperwork set aside for the moment.

"Wheels up at o'eight hundred."

"Are you all packed?"

He nodded as he set the paper down on the table and went about shoving it and it's mates back into the manila folder he'd pulled them from. "Basically. Natasha's taking care of civilian clothes- apparently I don't have anything 'appropriate'," he made a face at that, his fingers trailing over the CLASSIFIED stamp on the folder. "Other than that, my equipment is all packed and I've just got to report to Medical for the pre-mission once over."

Phil must've caught his grimace because he sighed and stood from behind his desk. "You know you need that shot. We don't want a replay of the last time you missed your dose."

"I know," Clint grumbled as he ran a hand through his hair. "Shit just gives me a migraine."

"Better a migraine than a seizure."

He looked up to find Coulson standing over him, offering his hand. He sighed and took hold of it, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.

Clint wasn't entirely sure what the hell his pills did exactly- someone had tried to explain it to him, but like he'd said before: medical shit wasn't his field of expertise. Maybe one day he'd google what the doctor had told him, but in the mean time he just knew it kept him from freaking the hell out and convulsing all over the place.

"Why don't we grab dinner?" Phil suggested as he pulled Clint along, grabbing the coat hanging from the rack and flicking off the lights with his free hand.

"What'd you have in mind?"

The man shrugged and went to say something when they were interrupted. "Hey! Guys!"

Phil subtly let go of his hand and Clint had to resist the urge to reach out and grab it again as Woo came barrelling down the hall towards them, his own coat thrown over his arm and looking ready to leave.

"A bunch of us are heading out to the pub down the street. You in?"

Phil looked hesitant, and while Clint had been looking forward to having dinner just the two of them, Phil _really_ needed to be more social.

"Sounds good."

His handler glared at him.

"Oh come on Phil," Clint pestered, pulling at his sleeve. "You never come out with us. If you're not careful they're all going to think it's because you don't like them."

Coulson sighed before nodding and pulling on his jacket.

"That's the spirit, you need to spread your wings," Clint said knowingly as he buttoned up his sweater.

"A social butterfly I am not."

There'd never been a truer statement. "We'll fix that. Besides, they've got your beer on tap."

* * *

><p>When Phil said he wasn't a social butterfly, he wasn't exaggerating. He wasn't a shut in or anything, but he preferred the company of a few people and didn't stray too far from his set social circle. That and he was so tone deaf he couldn't even carry a tune if his life depended on it. Other SHIELD agents in general didn't seem to share his difficulties because whenever they got together with any sort of alcohol everyone reverted back to their university days as they shouted into a microphone while the karaoke versions of just about every song from the 80s blasted through the bar's speakers. It always ended up like High School Musical had met Suits. It was weird and sometimes embarrassing.<p>

Ties and heels alike were abandoned around their tables and buttons undone as they all knocked back shots, pitchers of beer, and martinis. Another problem was Phil wasn't much of a drinker, he'd have enough beer for a bit of a buzz, but he was much more reserved than his colleagues. And no one ever wants to be the one basically sober kid at the party.

The 'pub down the street' as Woo had called it, was in fact down the street, down a different side street and then down an alley. It was the kind of establishment health inspectors loved to shut down but everyone else loved it for the cheap drinks, good sound system and relatively small number of clientele. Agents had been going there since before Fury's days and would probably continue after all of them had retired. There was a theory that the bartender had signed a confidentiality agreement because nothing loosens someone's lips like four pitchers of beer, some body shots and a late night.

When they arrived Barton pointed towards the back where Natasha was already sitting with a drink in hand. Phil let himself be dragged along, waving to his different co-workers as he went. More than a few of them called after Clint, wanting him to join them. To the archer's credit he smiled and said he'd be there soon, but didn't let go of Coulson's hand until they climbed into the booth.

The table was covered with crate paper and Natasha pulled a shot class filled with crayons from the self set into the wall and grabbed a black one for herself before tossing the purple in Clint's direction. He snatched the crayon, idly drawing a little rabbit as she set up a game of Hang Man. Phil relaxed back into his seat, loosening his tie as Woo dropped a pitcher and some glasses off. He nodded his thanks as he poured some for himself and Clint.

"So, do you two come here a lot?"

"Often enough," Natasha answered, putting down her crayon to signal that she was done. Clint glanced over at it and quickly began running through all the vowels before switching the Russian. The redhead quickly filled in a few spaces before Clint hazarded a guess. When she nodded and finished the word he broke out into laughter before both of them began chatting in quick fire Russian.

Phil smiled around the rim of his glass, just watching the two of them. He'd never learned Russian- he'd taken Korean instead- but he could tell they were enjoying themselves.

Eventually Sharon Carter managed to pull Clint away for a round of shots and a song, and Coulson watched him leave, already missing the warmth against his side.

"You're both pitiful," Natasha huffed as she downed the rest of her drink and reached to finish off Clint's abandoned beer. He stared at her for a moment, signalling for her to continue.

"Don't pretend you're not crazy about him. You might be hard to read, but believe me; you're not that hard to read."

He glanced over to where Sharon and Clint were both hunched over on the stage, scrolling through the list of songs. A few words passed between them before Sharon smiled and nodded. She glanced towards the drum kit set up for live bands before she settled upon a guitar propped up against the wall. Coulson ignored the flare of jealousy that burned like wildfire in his chest as her hand settled on Clint's arm when she leaned in to ask him something.

Natasha must've noticed some sort of look of his face judging by the rather unbecoming snort she let out as she twisted around to settle her back against the wall so that she could stretch her legs out along her seat. "Hopeless."

He glared at her but she didn't have the decency to look cowed and instead just smiled right back at him in that unnerving way of hers.

The sound of a few chords being strummed started up and they both turned to see Clint holding the guitar, his fingers dancing across the strings with a look of concentration on his face.

"I didn't know he could play," the Russian commented as she munched on a few peanuts she'd grabbed from the bowl on the table.

Neither did Phil actually.

The look of concentration was slowly slipping from Barton's face as he seemed to relax into the instrument. He nodded to Sharon who clicked play and the opening beat started of some song Phil couldn't identify. As Clint broke in with the guitar he instantly recognized the tune and couldn't help the smile that snuck onto his face as the archer started singing the opening lines of Stuck in the Middle with You. Sharon began clapping out the beat as they started harmonizing into the microphone.

The agents who'd been crowding around the pool tables began making their way to the dance floor in pairs- mostly women at first, but eventually the men joined them and soon enough everyone had joined in singing.

"A man of many hidden talents."

Natasha only nodded in agreement, eyeing Agent Woo as he approached nervously.

"Agent Romanov," he started. "I was just uh- wondering- if you would um—

Natasha huffed, shucked off her leather jacket and slid across the booth, offering her hand to the stunned man. Phil hid a laugh as he took a sip of his beer, watching the stunned look that played across Woo's face before he seemed to get a hold of himself and took her hand to lead her out to the dance floor, Natasha's stiletto boots clicking all the way.

When the song finally wound down everyone burst into applause, cheering as they held up their glasses in salute. Sharon and Clint took a dramatic bow before hopping off the stage to make way for the next singer. Clint began making his way back to the booth, people clapping him on the back as he went and suddenly Phil realized just how many friends Clint had within SHIELD.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Barton had some abandonment and trust issues, but looking at him surrounded by smiling people, all of them calling out for him to join them, well it was obvious Clint had made a home for himself.

A swell of guilt rose up in Coulson's chest as he wondered if William Brandt had had many friends in the IMF. If they missed him as much as everyone at SHIELD would miss Clint if something were to happen to him. While he'd never had the pleasure of meeting Brandt before the accident, his file had been filled with notes from past partners, teammates and COs, all of them practically gushing about his work in both the field in the office, but what had really struck him were the more personal notes. They'd been proud to know him. They'd been proud to be his friends. William Brandt had been a good soldier, a good person, and he'd been loved.

Phil was startled from his maudlin thoughts as Clint practically threw himself down into the booth beside him. He rolled his eyes as the archer snatched his beer and took a sip before settling down in the seat, leaning into his side just enough that Phil's heart gave a little flutter.

"What's got you looking so depressed?" He asked, leaning away a bit to get a better look at his face.

Coulson sighed, shaking his head. "Just thinking."

"Yeah, well, stop. Did you forget? You're here to learn to be a social butterfly," Clint growled playfully, elbowing him lightly in the ribs. "Get off your ass and go flutter or something."

"Another night maybe."

"I'll hold you to that."

"I know you will."

"This isn't about Stark is it?" He asked dubiously, reaching out for Phil's beer again. The agent sighed and shoved the glass in his direction.

"Yes, the mere thought of being in his presence sends me into a downward spiral of depression." Actually...that wasn't far from the truth. Stark was a bigger pain in the ass than Nick Fury, Clint Barton, taxes, and jury duty combined.

"I dunno'. Seems like an interesting guy if you ask me," Barton shrugged, his fingers tapping on the table top to the beat of the terrible rendition of Uptown Girl that a few agents were trying to screech out. "But then again, I've never met him in person."

"And be thankful you never will," He chuckled, his eyes trailing to the dance floor where a now more relaxed looking Woo was still dancing with Natasha. From where he was sitting he could spot five other men eyeing her. Not that he could blame them. She was quite the eyeful with her tight jeans and long red hair. The accent didn't hurt either- although that was beginning to fade as she continued to work with SHIELD's language coach.

"Who knows? We might meet some day," Clint pointed out before he took a sip of what used to be Phil's beer. The thought of Clint and Stark in the same State, let alone the same room was a frightening one. If they hated one another...well, there was nothing anyone could do about that, but oh god, what if they _got along_? The two of them were bad enough individually. Together they'd probably cause some sort of international incident.

"Maybe," Coulson replied casually, because his poker face was legendary and had helped him pay off most of his car with a few trips to the local casino. But Clint burst into laughter and it took Phil a moment to realize the other man had seen right through him.

When he finally calmed Clint just grinned at him for a moment before asking, "So when do you leave?"

"A few hours after you and Natasha. I should be back a few days before you're due to report in if all goes well."

"I expect my cookie when I get back."

Phil smiled helplessly, nodding as he did. "I know."

And God, if the smirk that Clint sent back in his direction didn't make his stomach twist and his face grow hot, but all he could think was _name redacted_. Because there was someone out there who'd probably felt the exact same way whenever William Brandt had smiled at them.

Someone called for Clint to come and get in on a game of pool and the younger man reached out with fingers still damp from the condensation on his glass to give Phil's hand a squeeze.

"Flutter," he said pointedly, before climbing out of the booth to go join the others.

Coulson sat back and watched him go, content to stay where he was and just observe the other man as he slapped Agent O'Brian on the back and grabbed a cue from the rack.

William Brandt might've been a good man- a great one even, and people had loved him, there was no doubt about that. They probably missed him just as fiercely as they'd all miss Clint and his heart went out to them. But to regret what they'd done to Will would be to regret Barton's existence. And maybe Phil was a little biased because he'd never met him and- and maybe he had..._feelings_...for Clint. But Will was gone now and instead there was Clint Barton. And he was just as _good_ and just as _loved_ as Brandt had ever been.

* * *

><p>The next morning it looked as if half of SHEILD's upper agents were hung over to various degrees. Agent Woo had been passed out on his desk when Coulson had come in around six after being called in due to a roster change in some ongoing missions that involved him and his agents, and when he'd gone to grab coffee at seven Woo had still been there, drooling on a sit-rep.<p>

He'd already gotten a hold of Natasha to tell her of the changes, but Barton had a tendency to set his phone down in random places and forget about it. Generally it was passed around from agent to agent until one of them could track him down. Today, Agent Sitwell had picked up when Phil had called. Apparently he'd found the mobile sitting in a planter in the courtyard, beeping with seventeen missed messages. Thus, Barton had to be tracked down through word of mouth and through good old fashioned searching- which often involved tapping on random ceiling tiles with a broom stick to see if he'd pop out.

Eventually Phil spotted him coming out of the range, armed with a compound bow rather than his favoured recurve that was probably already loaded onto the plane. He called out, catching Clint's attention before he could disappear down the nearest hallway.

"Did Med send you? Because I'm heading over now," the archer answered as Phil made his way over.

"Change of plans. Widow is heading to do some undercover work with Stark for a few weeks so you're being loaned out alone for this mission."

"What about you, sir? Thought you were all amped up to head out there yourself," Barton smirked.

Coulson glared as his phone gave a beep and reached down to check it.

"So what, Natasha gets to go live it up with Stark while I crawl around some godforsaken jungle and get malaria?"

"You won't get malaria," he replied distractedly as he shoved a clipboard he'd been carrying under his arm so that he could have both hands to text. "...but essentially yes."

Clint huffed, looking put out as he fiddled with one of the pulleys on his bow. "Whatever. But next time, I get to seduce the rich—

Coulson grumbled as he once again began a valiant battle against autocorrect. There'd been several incidents already involving it that had resulted in some very expensive cover up operations. So he struggled to get his phone to stop changing Tony to tiny for a few moments before he realized that Barton had never finished what he'd been saying. Phil glanced up from his phone to find the archer standing stock still, his bow clutched tightly in his hands.

"...Barton?"

He shoved his clipboard and phone into the arms of the nearest junior agent who'd been happening to walk by as he carefully made his way towards the younger man. "Barton?"

He waved a hand in front of the Clint's face, but the grey blue eyes didn't even attempt to track the motion. It was like a switch had been flipped; the lights were on but nobody was home.

"Hawkeye," he tried a little louder as agents began crowding to see what was going on.

"Hey!" He clapped his hands, trying and failing to get Clint's attention.

"Sir," one of the junior agents started hesitantly. "Should I go page Medical?"

Coulson reached out and gently pried the bow from Barton's fingers, but his arm and hand remained taught, as if they were still gripping the weapon. He passed the bow off to another agent and took Clint by the shoulders.

"Clint," he started, staring into his eyes. "Can you hear me? Someone, help me get him down," he called when he got to answer. A few agents rushed forward to help him lower Clint to the floor in case he started seizing. He was stiff under their hands, his body resisting as they tried to bend his arms and legs.

"Somebody call Sitwell. Tell him to get a hold of the CIA and to tell them that we're going to have to pull Hawkeye from their roster for this mission. And someone get Medical down here with a stretcher!"

With that dealt with Coulson turned back to Clint who was staring up blankly at the ceiling.

"Clint," he tried again, bracing his hands on either side of the other man's face and trying to ignore the uncharacteristic panic that was tearing through him. "Can you hear me?"

Barton only continued to stare up at the ceiling, barely even blinking.

"Sir, Medical is on their way, and Agent Sitwell has been notified as has Black Widow. Unfortunately, she's already on route to the mission location," a junior agent told him, squatting down beside him to take Barton's pulse.

There was a clamor as people made way for several nurses along with Dr. Alison who came crashing into the hallway with a stretcher.

"What happened?" she asked as she practically crashed to her knees on the tile floor at Phil's side.

"He just froze," he told her uselessly. "I thought he was having a seizure, so we got him down on the floor, but he's been fine."

She pulled a penlight from her pocket and shone it into Clint's eyes. "It sounds a bit like an absence seizure, but they don't last for this long," she muttered worriedly as he tucked away her light to check his pulse. "Agent Barton," she started her voice slow and clear as she went to pick up his hand, struggling a moment because of how stiff he was. "Can you hear me? If you can, try to squeeze my fingers."

When she got no response she waved the nurses over who then grabbed a scoop stretcher. Phil was pushed aside as they set it up and carefully lifted Barton onto the actual stretcher to transport him to Med Bay. They began to wheel him off but not before Alison crooked a finger in his direction, signalling for him to follow.

The other agents watched on worriedly as their colleague was taken away until Phil snapped at them all to get back to work and sent them scrambling.

"Is this some side effect?" he asked angrily. "We've basically been feeding him poison for the past year and a half."

Alison sighed, her heels clacking solidly against the floor as they hurried after the nurses. "I can't be sure what this is until I've done some more tests, but chances are it's something to do with the medication. What was he doing before he became unresponsive?"

"We were just talking!" Phil growled angrily and his phone suddenly began ringing up a storm in his pocket. No doubt Fury had heard about the commotion. "We were going over some roster changes, and he was- he was just joking about getting malaria," he finished, his throat tightening.

Clint had been fine. There'd been no sign- no way to know- and he'd just suddenly- he'd just _stopped_.

They conducted every sort of scan, preformed numerous tests, and yet everything came back inconclusive while Clint still remained unresponsive to any outside stimulus. They'd pricked his fingers and toes, hoping to get any sort of reaction only to come up short. They'd hooked him up to all manner of machines to monitor his heart rate, blood pressure, and brain waves but they all basically told them nothing. And all the while Phil watched from his place in a chair at Barton's bedside, trying again and again to call him back to awareness.

"His brain activity is as normal as his gets," Alison said as she consulted one of the screens. "It's like he just decided to take a break to think things over."

"Did R&D say if anything in his medication could cause this?" Coulson asked, his hands white knuckled as he dug his nails into the arms of his chair.

"Nothing like this is impossible," she said carefully. "But at this point, with how he's responded to the pills and injections so far, it's improbable."

"He didn't take his dose this morning, could—

"A little delay wouldn't have caused such a severe reaction. Seven hours from now, it would likely result in a reaction, but not within this time frame, no. And we've already administered his normal dosage, so if that were the case I'd expect to see some improvement by now."

"Then what is it?" he snapped, his temper slipping away from him.

The doctor looked lost as she ran a hand through her bangs. "I don't know," She admitted. "I've never dealt with anyone in this type of situation before. But he's not in any danger. Like I said, it's like he just stopped to think about...What were you talking about before this happened?"

Phil stared at her questioningly before answering. "He was joking about malaria. Widow was supposed to be his partner on a mission but she was switched to another operation. He was joking about that."

Alison hummed thoughtfully, tapping her nails on her stethoscope. "His brain activity is mainly centered in the hippocampus."

"He's remembering something?" Phil guessed, a sense of dread creeping into his stomach.

"Or, what you were talking about triggered something. A memory maybe, but his brain might be trying to suppress it. If I were to make a comparison, I'd say it's like a computer rebooting to protect the software."

He stared uselessly at her for a moment before she continued, gaining momentum.

"The drugs we've been giving him for the past year and a half are meant to suppress his memories- they're essentially, along with a lot of other things, doing carefully controlled damage to his hippocampus. It's like putting Alzheimer's on a leash. Whatever you said, it might've clicked somehow, but it was like a computer detecting a virus- it realized a file should've been there, but instead found a hole, an infection. So it temporarily shut down so it can reboot, protect the rest of the files, and try to fix itself."

Coulson stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out if what she'd just said actually made any sort of sense. Sensing his scrutiny, she glared at him, crossing her arms in indignation.

"You want to come up with a better analogy?"

"No," he sighed finally, leaning back in his chair as he struggled to release his death grip on the arms. "I think that'll do. But I want some conclusive results within forty-eight hours."

He looked over to where Clint way lying, his eyes glassy as they stared up at something that none of them could see. He looked a little pale maybe, but otherwise he seemed alright; nothing like those first few months of thrashing and pain and starvation.

But unlike that time, now Phil knew what he was missing. Back then Clint had just been a body to watch over; a project to finish but now, now he had entangled himself so deeply into everyone's lives that it was hopeless to even think of removing him.

"When will he wake up?' he asked, reaching out to take Clint's hand into his. He rubbed his thumb gently over the smooth skin of his knuckles and took in the feel of the calluses that rubbed against his own hand.

"I'm afraid that's up to him."

* * *

><p>Ethan stared down at his beer, running his fingers along the rim of his glass as Luther sat across from him. They made a point to meet up every few weeks or months, depending on their schedules, to talk. It always started off with the personal side of things, but the conversation always fell off that edge and landed on work. Luther had been around more the past few months and while Ethan would never admit it, he knew his friend had been doing it to keep track of him. See how he was handling himself. How he was doing.<p>

It'd been a year and a half now. And maybe...maybe he was doing okay. At least, that's what he told everyone, even himself. He might've been a liar, but he was damned good one, because even he was starting to believe it. The new apartment he had helped, keeping busy with missions helped even more. Avoiding anything that even remotely reminded him of- of _him_, had been even better. But one day he'd woken up and decided that he'd been in denial for long enough and really, who wanted to go through the rest of that shit? So he'd skipped straight to acceptance. Will would've called him impatient

("You can't just skip steps, Ethan. They're there for a reason.")

But he'd called it efficiency.

("If I know I can just skip them, why waste the time?"

"This is why all your IKEA furniture is falling apart.")

Oh yes, he was nothing if not efficient. Even in grief.

He'd just come back from Burma and was going to ship back out to Berlin in a few days, but a little down time was welcomed.

"So, I was talking to one of my contacts from the CIA," Luther started, breaking the comfortable silence that had fallen over their table.

"You still talk with Greg after what happened?" Ethan laughed. It got easier and easier every time he did it.

"Course. Took awhile, and a bit of some rather classified information, but we're back on good terms," the other man smiled warmly, his teeth a flash of bright white against his dark skin.

"Anyway," he continued, picking up a fry from the plate resting between them. "Apparently, they'd got this one guy on loan to Wetworks- can't remember his codename. Hawk maybe- And it didn't work out in the end, he got real sick or something and was pulled from the mission roster last minute, but they say he's the best marksman in the entire fucking world."

Ethan frowned, dipping his own fry into a mix of ketchup and pepper. "How good could he be? A lot of people claim to be a crack shot."

"Greg said this guy was the real deal. It took them a lot to have their request for him even _considered_. He's not one of those mutants either, one-hundred percent human. But he _never_ misses. Specializes with a bow if you can believe it, but he's the best sniper in the world."

"A bow huh?" Ethan said, considering. He'd actually never met an agent who favoured the bow. "Sounds like an interesting guy."

Luther nodded, leaning back in his chair to flag down their waiter. "You're telling me. Sounds like a guy the IMF could use, right?"

"Who's he with now?"

"SHIELD."

"Ah, that's no good," he chuckled, the idea that'd been forming in his head dissipating. "You know how protective they are of their agents. As soon as we came calling we'd get the door slammed in our faces. But still," he continued lightly as their waiter walked up, ready to prepare the cheque.

"I wouldn't mind meeting a guy like that."


	6. Can't Promise That I Won't Let You Down

The next time Clint was fully conscious and lucid was a week after what'd happened outside the range. Natasha had been less than pleased, finding herself across the country while the one partner she could actually stand, and who'd sort of become her best friend, was having some kind of unidentifiable medical emergency. Coulson had seen the surveillance footage of her little 'match' with Stark's driver (As had most of SHIELD. Someone had seen fit to send a mass email) and he had no doubt she'd used the opportunity to burn off a little anger.

He couldn't blame her for being on edge. The status updates he'd periodically given her hadn't been promising. For days Clint had been unresponsive only to sporadically wake, confused as to where he was, who they were, and why he was there. By day two a Nasogastric feeding tube had joined the saline drip that he'd been put on shortly after his admittance. Phil hadn't liked seeing him like that- hooked up to so many tubes and wires that seemed to double in number as the days went by- but with Clint's metabolism it was a necessary evil.

But on the seventh day of everyone in SHIELD waiting with bated breath for news of their colleague, Clint fully woke and had promptly taken the initiative to extricate himself from the various things attached to his person. He'd been in the middle of pulling out his feeding tube, alarms blaring around him, when the nurses had gotten there.

It'd been one of the few times Phil hadn't been by his bedside, having being called away for a meeting concerning Stark's newest misadventures and a quick briefing on Ivan Vanko. By the time he'd been able to check his messages and walked (practically jogged) down there, Barton had been settled back in his bed and he was already begging for real food. Needless to say, no one had ever been so relieved to hear him whine and complain.

From what their scans and psychiatrics could determine, other than a little disorientation and some lethargy, whatever had put Clint down for the count had passed with no lingering side effects. It was the best outcome they could've imagined, but Phil couldn't help but wonder just what had set him off in the first place. And if it would happen again. R&D had already been set to work trying to come up with a way to prevent a recurrence, but Phil didn't hold out much hope. There was only so much you could do to a person's mind without some severe repercussions. There were bound to be side effects no matter what they tried.

But aside from him and Dr. Alison, everyone else within SHIELD was just happy to have Clint back to normal. News had traveled fast and even Fury seemed to brighten up- which basically meant he cackled more malevolently and started scaring the junior agents again. Say what you will about Fury's relationship with Barton. They didn't agree on much, and they argued more often than anyone in SHIELD, and that included Fury and Stark, and sometimes they just stared at one another as they passed each other in the hall and it was pretty damn weird. But if they shared anything in common, it was their penchant for emotionally scarring the lower ranked SHIELD agents. Phil knew that they swapped stories over coffee in the morning and sometimes, if Clint wasn't parked on his couch or hiding out in the ceiling, he could be found sitting on _Fury's_ couch.

So yes, everyone was pretty happy with the state of things- well, everyone except Clint who was apparently so bored he wanted to "Claw my fucking eyes out, Coulson!"

Really, he couldn't say he was surprised when only two days after Barton had woken he received a call while typing up a report telling him that their resident Houdini was at it again.

"If you see him, tell him to get his ass back here," Dr. Alison growled through the phone before the line went dead.

Phil sighed and while a lesser man would have jumped, he just flinched when a voice called out from the ceiling. "I'm not going back!"

Dear God.

"Barton," he started calmly, as he set down the phone. He must've done something truly horrible in a past life to warrant all the crap he had to put up with. "I don't care if you're bored, you haven't been cleared for release yet, so you're going to march back there if I have to get someone to go up there and drag you out."

"Listen to me when I tell you this, because I've never been more serious in my life: I'm not going back! It's torture Phil," Clint whined, his voice muffled behind the ceiling tiles. "They don't even have a TV. What the hell am I supposed to do?"

"You're supposed to be resting!" he yelled, knowing it was useless.

"I can rest up here."

Coulson was suddenly having flashbacks to when he'd had to babysit his four year old niece one weekend.

"Barton- Clint, just," he said, frustrated. "Get down here. If you're not going back to Medical, at least rest on the couch."

After a moment a tile hesitantly slid away, revealing one rather cautious and overtired looking Clint Barton. "You're not going to turn me in?"

"No."

"Promise?"

"For the love of God, just get down here!"

He dropped down easily, landing squarely on his feet and still dressed in the regulation white t-shirt and grey track pants Medical gave to their more physically able patients. He gave Phil a small smile that seemed almost out of place on his face. It wasn't his normal smirk and playful grin; it was timid, almost shy in a way. Clint didn't say anything as he made his way to the couch, pulling the blanket from where it was folded along the back, and wrapping himself up before quickly flopping down onto the cushions.

Phil just watched him for a while, but wasn't completely surprised when five minutes later Barton was fast asleep. A hospital bed wasn't exactly known for being the most comfortable thing to lie on.

Dr. Alison had said she didn't want him out in the field for at least another month, just to make sure he was alright. So if Clint was driving people crazy now, well, Phil was actually grateful that he'd have to head out eventually to meet with Natasha at Stark's. Fury was scheduled to fly out there next week and from what Phil could discern of his plan, he could already tell Stark wasn't going to know what hit him.

Fury had a...flare for theatrics to say the least. The induction speech he gave every year for new agents was like something scripted straight out of a movie. It scared all the newbies; half into quitting and half into indentured service. He had a feeling that the Director lay in bed at night thinking up snappy one-liners and running through scenarios in his head. Besides, a cackle like that took _practice_.

Clint muttered something in his sleep as he shifted, shoving his face into one of the pillows before letting out a little sigh. Coulson leaned back in his chair, letting himself relax for a moment.

Despite the possible (horrendous, earth shattering, international incident causing) repercussions, he was almost tempted to request that Barton be assigned to him when he travelled out to California. It was a simple babysitting job really, nothing too demanding. If anything it would be a nice way to ease him back into active duty.

Clint grumbled something about elephants and Phil cradled his head in his hands, staring at the man who he used to call Fury's Pet Project, who he used to watch thrash as he was tied down to a hospital bed, a man that he once thought was a lost cause...a man that he was now completely and _utterly_ in love with.

* * *

><p>Because logic won out, Phil had made the right decision to not ask for Clint to be sent to California with him. Unsurprisingly dealing with Stark had been a nightmare, if amusing at times.<p>

("Why do you all keep laughing at Happy?"

"No reason.")

But when he received a call about New Mexico he figured it was about time he broke Clint out of 'the joint' as the archer called it in his emails. Apparently he'd been loaned out to R&D for the duration of his leave and wasn't exactly enjoying it. The plan was that Clint would fly into LAX and then they'd drive out ahead of the main force to get a look at whatever the hell this thing was.

Phil couldn't deny the flutter of excitement in his stomach as he waited outside Arrivals, scanning the out coming crowds for a familiar head. When he finally spotted him he was rather perturbed to find Clint limping down the hallway, his bag tossed over his shoulder and the kit containing his bow tucked under his arm.

Phil stared at him, unimpressed as he made his way over. "Do I want to know what you did?"

Barton glared as he threw his bag down, but kept his bow in his arms. "R&D decided to try out some new kind of Prophylactic braces that protect your knees and ankles when you jump for heights. I've spent the last two weeks with my legs encased in that shit jumping off of twenty foot platforms. And let's just say the braces need some major fucking work," he growled, wincing as he bent to pick up his bag.

Phil waved him off and ducked down to grab it himself. "You can stretch out in the back seat if you want. It's a long drive, so you'll have time to relax and go over the mission file."

The car was waiting for them just outside the gate, the government plates and stickers stopping it from being towed. Taxi drivers gave them dirty looks from behind their wheels as they loaded in Clint's gear and climbed in.

"You'd think SHIELD could spring for something nicer," he complained as he gingerly sat down in the back, spreading his aching legs out along the seat.

"It could be worse," Phil warned him, experience colouring his voice. "Believe me."

There'd once been an incident involving a Toyota, a raccoon and a cut break line that still gave Sitwell a haunted look in his eyes whenever it was mentioned.

He grabbed the mission file from its place on the passenger seat and passed it back. Barton quickly pulled out the satellite images, tossing aside and completely ignoring the four page long report with footnotes that a junior agent had spent eight hours writing.

The object was completely unidentifiable and of unknown origins. Even the top scientists at SHIELD were puzzled as to what it was and were contacting NASA for some input. At this point, it looked like they'd have to actually examine it in person to really get a read on what it—

"Looks like a hammer," Clint pointed out, turning the photo this way and that.

Phil leaned back to take another look. "Yes... I suppose it does _sort of_ resemble a hammer," he admitted as he started the engine and pulled away from the curb.

"Nah, man, I think it might actually _be_ a hammer. I mean, look at it," he said, holding the photo out for Phil to look at.

"It's not a hammer, Clint. It's an unidentified object that fell from space forty-eight hours ago that is of unknown origins. It could be many things, but a hammer, it is not."

"Pretty sure it is."

Phil kept his eyes on the road, but he could _hear_ the smirk on Barton's face. "Well, no matter how much it might appear to resemble one in the photo, I assure you it isn't."

"Whatever you say, boss," the archer laughed, pulling the photo back as he settled down. "Let me know if you get tired and I'll drive."

Phil couldn't help but chuckle at that as he adjusted the air conditioning- it was so damn _hot_.

"When was the last time you actually drove a car Barton?"

When only silence answered him he continued. "You don't even have a license."

"I don't?"

He could hear the surprise and confusion in Clint's voice and looked in the rear view to find him frowning thoughtfully.

"It's expired. And believe it or not, the government isn't exactly keen on giving someone with a history of seizures and recent head trauma a license."

William Brandt's license was still very much valid, but the last time Clint Barton had registered with the DMV had been back before he'd joined the army. And with what had happened, Brandt's license would have been revoked because of the medical complications.

"They'll give me a gun, but they won't let me drive a _car_?" he asked incredulously.

"What can I say? That's the American government for you."

Clint huffed, clearly put out by the news but even his annoyance wasn't enough to keep him awake and soon he managed to doze off, leaning back against the cool glass of the window.

Phil made a mental note to have a word with R&D about using highly trained agents as test subjects. He doubted whoever had set the placement up had jumping for high heights in mind when they'd assigned Barton. Generally agents were asked to try out new guns or in Clint's case, bows, to make sure they worked well under different conditions. Not exactly fun, but there wasn't much chance of injury either.

The rest of the drive was normal except for a little hiccup at a gas station he'd stopped at the fill up, but he'd been back quickly enough that Clint hadn't even woken up from the air conditioning being switched off. He'd set the powder donuts on the seat beside him, knowing Clint would be hungry when he woke up before he'd turned the ignition and took off down the long stretch of road again, intent on making it to their destination before nightfall.

* * *

><p>"Phil, I don't normally argue with you-<p>

"_What_?"

"But I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. Because _this_ thing," he said wildly gesturing at the foreign object in front of them. "Is definitely a hammer."

By the time they'd arrived at the crash site Clint had apparently recuperated enough to be annoying again. He was standing in a non-regulation t-shirt, his arms crossed as he stared intently down at the mysteriously object that _may_ have _slightly_ resembled a hammer.

Dust had already gathered on his boots and jeans and Phil's suit wasn't fairing any better as the sun beat down on their necks. Even in the late afternoon the heat was merciless and the ground was cracked and dry beneath their feet in a way that old of weeks of draught.

Clint planted a foot on the ground, wrapping both of his hands around the handle and gave a sharp tug. The ham— _object_ didn't budge, staying firmly embedded into the rocky earth.

"Well, that thing isn't going anywhere anytime soon," Barton grunted as he stepped back. "Don't know how we're going to move it to the base."

Coulson glanced around the area, taking some quick measurements with his eyes. "We aren't going to move it to the base, Barton," he said. "We're going to build the base around it."

Clint crossed his arms again, and Phil was glad that his eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses so Barton wouldn't see him staring.

"Huh. Sounds fun."

Phil rolled his eyes as he turned to look at the surrounding landscape. "Sounds like a pain in the ass."

Clint nodded, walking around the object to get a view from all sides. "So the hammer is emitting some frequency that interferes with communication signals?"

Phil sighed, deciding it was a lost cause. "Yes, something like that. With the proper equipment we should be able to work around it though."

Clint bent down, running his finger along the hammer to clean away the dust. "This thing isn't some satellite, or debris or anything. Look at these engravings. These are intricate," he pointed out, tracing the pattern that had been hidden beneath a layer of dirt.

"Celtic or Scandinavian," he muttered, his eyes narrowed as he examined it. "Sørensen might know, but then again, I'm pretty sure he's from Oregon."

Phil eyed the hammer doubtfully, wondering just what the hell they were getting themselves into.

"This is weird," Clint pronounced as he stood, dusting his hands off on his pants. Phil nodded in agreement, but otherwise didn't comment. Clint shaded his eyes with his hand, spinning around to look at the parameter of the crater.

"Seeing as we're basically in a valley, we're going to need something with height, or we'll be sitting ducks."

"An order has already been put in for a guard tower. I've also taken the liberty of getting a crane for you."

Barton turned to stare at him, a questioning look on his face. "What the hell will I need a crane for?"

"We'll attach a bucket to it and—

A smile broke out across Clint's face as he caught on. "This is going to be _awesome_."

"Don't get too excited," Coulson said, trying to sound disapproving as he started walking back towards where he'd parked. This close to the hammer his phone was basically useless. Clint was quick to follow after him, even with the slight limp to his step.

"What's not to be excited about? A hammer fell from the sky, I get a crane, and I got to spend the day with you."

Phil almost tripped over a rock at the last part, his eyes flying to Clint. The archer gave him a small smile before hurrying up the hill ahead of him.

"And who knows? Weird hammer that no one can lift, with even weirder Scandinavian engravings? Maybe Thor's visiting New Mexico," he joked, kicking up dust as he hopped from rock to rock.

Phil rolled his eyes, a smile sneaking onto his face. "Shut up."

If Clint could hear the blatant fondness in his voice, he didn't mention it.

* * *

><p>When all was said and done, they were left with a half destroyed New Mexican city, twelve injured agents, several totalled cars, traumatized civilians, a useless base, no hammer, and one <em>very<em> smug Clint Barton.

"I'd just like to point out that I _so_ called this one."

"Sitwell, hit him."

* * *

><p>I've no idea why it took me so long to post this, because it's just been sitting in my computer for ages, as have other chapters. Thanks so much for everyone who has reviewed, they really mean a lot to me! I'll start putting these up regularly considering I've got a bunch of chapters already written and just sitting around.<p>

ForeverFalling.

PS. Oh yeah, Happy Holidays!


	7. I'm Not Whole- When You're Not Near

**"A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY:**

** Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children"**

** -Markus Zusak**

* * *

><p>He didn't like to talk about it; it was no one's damn business and people tended to judge you on that kind of thing. It was in the past: over. He didn't need to 'talk about it' and he had no desire for 'closure' as the shrinks back in the army had always called it. His parents were dead, the sound of their coffins being slammed shut had been all the closure he'd needed. But one day over dinner Phil had asked and he'd stared at him, just taking in the sight of him for a moment and then he'd started to tell him a story. A story about a boy, a travelling circus, some bottles, a bow, and a handful of stars. It'd gone a little something like this:<p>

His childhood hadn't exactly been ideal. His father had been more interested in searching for the answer to life's problems at the bottom of a bottle of gin. His mother had only been interested in not getting hit— And maybe he'd resented her for it, but with age came clarity and if he had the chance to see her again he knew he'd forgive her on the spot.

He'd had a brother back then. A brother who'd once been just like him: scared, with a hole in his chest that ached whenever Dad looked at him like he didn't deserve to breathe. But that hole in Barney's chest had been filled up with hate and anger and rage and maybe confusion too- because Clint could remember wondering what he'd ever done to deserve this lot in life. Wondering why the God they taught about in school would abandon him there to suffer. So, Barney had taken a page from his father's book- a book written in bruises and blood, and gone searching for answers at the bottom of a bottle, only that had one rattled with pills.

The orphanage hadn't been much better. Clint had spent years learning to be quiet, to blend in, but all the nuns had ever done was lecture him on how to get noticed by the people that had paraded through every day, their eyes scanning the line up of children the same way customers used to look at the cuts of meat in window of his Dad's shop.

Running away to the circus had been Barney's idea- or maybe it'd been the pills', but either way, he'd grabbed hold of Clint's hand and dragged him out into a world away from daily prayers to a God who'd never listened and judging eyes. They'd been happy, maybe. What was happiness anyway? He'd travelled the country with his brother at his side- and Barney- well, he wasn't as strong as their Dad had been so his punches had hurt less.

Then Clint had begun learning archery and with every arrow- every thunk of a bulls eye, the hole in his own chest had gotten smaller and smaller until the only reason his chest ever ached was if Barney had kicked him especially hard.

For years he'd waited for his brother to find his answers. To realize that there weren't any. That life was just fucking unfair and maybe they were all alone, but at least they were alone together. He'd been thirteen when he began to think that maybe Barney had just given up. He'd been fourteen when he'd started thinking that maybe...maybe being alone by himself was better than being alone with his brother. He'd been smart, even if Barney had called him stupid. His grades had been good, and he could remember things and he'd had his aim. He'd been fifteen when Trick Shot had betrayed him and he'd been upset, but hell, that was just life wasn't it? People used you, and then they left and that was that. Maybe Barney had hit him and started stinking so strongly of gin that Clint could smell it from his own bed and it had given him nightmares, but Barney had stayed. And that'd meant everything.

His teachers had asked questions, but blending in was an art form he'd perfected before he could ride a bike and deflection was a close second. Friends were a luxury, not a necessity like studying. Barney had been content to work at that circus for the rest of his life, but Clint had haddreams. He'd get into a good school and get a good job and then he'd take care of them. He was seventeen when he'd realized that those dreams couldn't include his brother anymore.

He'd been lying on the floor of the storage room where they'd slept, staring at the drops of blood that had fallen like constellations on the concrete. Clint had read his future in those murky red stars.

He'd pushed himself up, his ribs flaring with agony, and climbed to his feet. He'd left that night, the echo of his younger self reverberating in his ears, telling him to turn back; that he needed to stay with his brother. Clint had cast those thoughts aside as he'd hitched his bag over his shoulder and begun the long walk to the shelter on Main Street.

Barney had left him a long time ago. It'd just been time to return the favour.

* * *

><p>Clint had a feeling that he wouldn't have seen hide or hair of Phil even if he hadn't spent the last two months being sent to various countries on missions. Since the whole Thor incident SHIELD was in high demand, which meant that more often than not Clint was off in some godforsaken country getting eaten alive by bugs and Phil was sequestered in meetings or swamped with paperwork that Clint didn't have a high enough clearance level to work on.<p>

Everyone was being run ragged and more than one person had had a breakdown as of late. Clint had just returned from his latest mission in Bangladesh and as soon as he'd gotten off the plane it'd been like everyone and their mother had needed to talk to him. Psych had paged him down for a six hour evaluation, Hill had put him through his paces in the training room and R&D kept calling him down to take his measurements for whatever reason (there'd been a lot of purple fabric flying around and he'd be lying to say he wasn't a little scared).

It'd been a week since he'd returned and he hadn't been able to take a single day off what with everyone suddenly needing to get a hold of him. It was to the point where there was nothing he wanted to do more than flop down on his couch and take a nap. But seeing as when he'd actually tried that Coulson had kicked him out because of some video conference call, he decided to retreat to the couch in Fury's office.

The other man didn't even bother to look up from his work as Clint dropped from the ceiling and landed on the coffee table, almost knocking over a potted orchid Hill had put there to brighten up the place. The Director mostly ignored him, only occasionally tossing him a handful of papers to work his way through, but he didn't tell him to get back to Psych to finish his evals either, so for the most part Clint was free to doze sprawled out on the cushions. Eventually Tasha appeared with Thai and they all sat there, the scratching of their pens the only sound that broke the comfortable silence. Clint wasn't exactly sure at this point what he was filling out, but it looked to involve an insurance claim for three houses out in Monte Carlo, a thirty-thousand liter water feature, and a Rottweiler.

"You've both been tapped."

Clint glanced up from trying to calculate the approximate monetary value of a family pet. "What?"

It wasn't the first time Fury had tried to throw them off by suddenly announcing something, but he generally only did it at formal meetings. He liked to keep the mind fucking to a strictly professional capacity.

"You've both been tapped for an elite team that SHIELD is putting together."

Natasha set down her noodles as Fury stared them down, his chair creaking as he shifted his weight. "What sort of team?"

Generally speaking, they'd been on almost every 'elite team' their country, and several others, had to offer. Loan outs were common and in the past year alone they'd worked with the CIA, DOD, FBI, NSA, and CSIS.

"What do you know about the Avenger's Initiative?"

Natasha simply shrugged, but suddenly numbers were flashing in front of Clint's eyes and before he could catch himself he was blurting out everything: costs, percentages, inflation calculations, and investors' names.

Natasha gave him a questioning look (she could do this thing with her eyebrow that he tried to do in the mirror once, but he'd only given himself a headache) as he rounded off the last sum to the second decimal place and he wasn't sure who was more surprised with what he'd just done: Fury or her.

"You can remember all that, but you can't remember when we've scheduled a training session?" she asked, clearly unimpressed.

"In my defense," he started, grateful for the out she'd provided. "It was scheduled for five am. A lot of people in my place would've 'forgotten' about it too."

The Director cleared his throat to catch their attention as he leaned forward in his chair, a smile breaking out across his face, and Phil had once warned him about a smile the Director would sometimes get and how it only promised suffering.

("How the hell will I know which one you're talking about?"

"Believe me, you'll just know.")

And yeah, Phil had been right about that. Even Natasha was shifting uneasily beside him and he had a feeling this was the first time she'd seen this look too.

"Where did you learn that?"

"Well, I uh, read it," he answered lamely, fiddling nervously with the papers he'd been working on.

"When?"

"Last...year? Maybe?" He said hesitantly, his eyes sliding to Natasha but she just shrugged again and left him to the wolves like the good partner she was. He could see how those rumours about her killing or abandoning her partners had sprung up. Every lie had a bit of truth to it.

Fury was still staring at him and Clint had the sudden urge to hop back up into the ceiling and go find Phil because it was really starting to freak him out.

"I take it that you've been withholding some things from medical."

"Maybe a few things, sir."

Some people lied about the amount of exercise they got in a week or if they took their vitamins, he just lied about how severe a little bit of brain trauma was. No big deal.

Fury sat back in his chair, crossing his arms as he continued to watch the archer. "You didn't need to hide this from us, Barton. The return of your eidetic memory makes you even more of an asset to SHIELD."

"Does it get me a raise?" He asked hopefully, because government wages were utter crap. He might have on base quarters, but he wasn't sure he could even afford an apartment if he'd wanted one with the way New York prices were.

"No."

Damn.

"But you'll get one if you sign on to the Initiative. A rather big one actually."

Clint perked up at that and he could tell Natasha's interest had been caught as well. She had a thing for shoes and leather, and neither came cheap.

"Who else will be on the team?" she asked.

Clint couldn't say he was too enthused with the thought of joining a team permanently. He and Tasha were good together. They didn't need anyone else messing things up.

"Besides the two of you, Thor from the incident in New Mexico, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, and Captain America."

"Wait wait," Clint started, cutting him off. "We've got some crazy god guy, the Hulk, who's MIA last I heard, a guy in a metal suit with a drinking problem, and a Captain America wannabe?"

"We've located Dr. Banner in Brazil, the two of you will be sent out tomorrow to retrieve him, Thor has promised to aid us in our 'quest to thwart evil' and Tony Stark has joined the rich man's version of AA."

"And the Captain America?" Natasha asked.

"Was pulled from the ice in the Antarctic yesterday and is currently being defrosted. He's the real deal," the Director said, and they could hear the glee underneath his outer core of badass.

"Sir, I'm not a medical expert here, but I'm pretty sure he's dead," Clint said flatly.

Fury glared at him. "Due to some unforeseen effects of the Super Soldier serum, Captain Rogers was preserved and is very much alive."

"How is that possible?" Natasha drawled, looking about as dubious about the whole thing as Clint felt.

"I don't have time to explain—

"He means he doesn't understand either," she muttered in Russian and Clint had to bite his cheek to stop himself from laughing. "I'll believe it when I see it."

Fury might not have understood Russian, but the look he gave them said that he got the gist. "If you agree, your offices will be transferred to the Helicarrier—

"The what now?" Also, he had an office? Because no one had ever told him that.

"And your quarters will be reassigned to one of Stark's mansions which he has generously offered up for our use."

"The Heli-what?" Clint asked again.

"The Helicarrier," the Direction pronounced slowly. "Stark designed it for us and it's finally ready for actual use.

" "Stark designed us a boat?" Natasha clearly looked unimpressed, but then again, nothing really impressed her anymore.

"It's not a boat, it's an airship."

"Won't that make the morning commute a little inconvenient?" Clint asked, because unless Stark decided to give them flying cars as well, a lot of people were going to be SOL. "What if someone's kid gets sick and they need to pick them up? We're just going to land the thing in the middle of New York?"

"It'll be much more costly," Natasha added. "Insurance for the civilian workers will skyrocket. And how will we get take out? No one would able to deliver anymore."

"Both of you just shut up," Fury snapped quietly, as he rubbed at his temples. "We're getting a Helicarrier, and that's final. Don't worry about the logistics; they're not your department."

Clint frowned, but yeah, a Helicarrier sounded cool. Completely impractical, but hell, he wasn't paying for it.

"Coulson will still be your Handler," Fury continued, his fingers drumming against the top of his desk as he stared down at a folder set in front of him. "He'll maintain an office on the carrier and in the mansion. He'll act as a liaison between SHIELD and the Avengers."

Clint couldn't help the smile that split across his face as a flutter of happiness made itself known in his stomach. Natasha sent a knowing look in his direction which he blatantly ignored.

"Now, are you in?"

They shared a glance before they both nodded. They'd never been ones to turn down a challenge.

"Good. I expect the both of you to act as good examples for your less experienced teammates," he said, and they could hear the underlying threat in his voice. "And remember, you might be on this team, but first and foremost, you work for SHIELD. If we make a call that Captain Rogers- who will be acting as your commander- doesn't agree with, your duty is to SHIELD first."

"Yes, sir," they answered flatly

"And," he started seriously, his face grim. "If one of the other members gets out of hand, I expect one of you, or both, to take action and...pull the plug just as you would with another rogue agent."

They both nodded again, familiar with the standard procedure. It wouldn't be the first time either of them had put a bullet or an arrow in the head of a teammate. When you dealt with beyond classified information that even the President was kept in the dark about, it was better to tie up any loose ends that might threaten your objective. And if that meant killing a possible leak, that was simply the business they were in. Still, it wasn't every day you got permission to kill national icons.

"You'll be the only unaltered members on the team," Fury warned them. "Don't over estimate yourselves, but don't let them underestimate you either. I have faith that you'll do us all proud."

* * *

><p>As it would turn out, transferring an entire base of operations onto a Helicarrier was pretty hard. Agents were frantically running around the halls with boxes in their arms and moving crews were already beginning to remove furniture. Some personnel would continue to work out of the landlocked office, but almost seventy percent of SHIELD's main base was being sent airborne. Clint still wasn't sure about the logistics of it all, but since he was apparently going to be living in a mansion he wasn't going to really let it bother him. The only problem was he wouldn't be able to drop in on Phil whenever he wanted anymore. The whole being stuck on the ground thing would sort of mess up his standard visits and he wasn't sure how much actual time Phil would spent at the mansion.<p>

It'd been three days since Fury had told them about the Initiative and he still hadn't had seen Coulson anywhere. Although he'd spent most of his time down in Medical taking memory tests—Fury might play it cool, but he's secretly the biggest nark known to man, so Clint had spent hours memorizing trays of objects and longer and longer poems and facts to see how much he remembered and how well he retained it over time. It hadn't exactly been fun.

But he'd finally managed to slip everyone and was making his way towards Phil's office, intent on actually seeing him for the first time in almost four months. He cast glares in the direction of the junior agents who were heading the same way with stacks of forms in their arms, sending them scurrying off to find someone else to deal with the paperwork.

"Barton!"

He turned to find Natasha coming down the hall in her civvies, the agents he'd just sent running dodging to the side to get out of her way.

"Here, your new uniform I had R&D make," she said, shoving the pile of leather into his hands. Clint unfolded the sleeveless shirt, taking in the dark red detailing stitched into the front.

"What was wrong with my old one?"

"Something about this being better for PR," she said dismissively.

"My old one was fine."

"They were going to change it if I made some specifications or not. Besides," she added, a smirk playing across her painted lips. "No partner of mine was going to be running around in purple spandex."

He paled at that, slowly folding the shirt back up. Well, that explained all the purple he'd seen down in R&D. "I like purple, but not that much purple," he grumbled as they began making their way down the hall together.

"Obviously. I changed the design and had them switch out the purple for the same red as my belt. If we're going to continue to be partners I won't have your uniform clashing with mine."

"Gee, thanks," he said, rolling his eyes as the door to Phil's office came into sight. Another junior agent was just about to knock so he let out a loud hiss, catching her attention. He saw Natasha make some gesture out of the corner of his eye and suddenly the other women was sprinting off in the other direction. Jeans and a t-shirt made Tasha no less intimidating.

"Where are you going anyway?" he asked, giving her a once over.

"Hair appointment."

"Huh, you should do something different," Clint said, eyeing her long red hair. "Maybe cut it shorter for a change. No one would grab it."

Natasha looked to consider his suggestion for a moment before shrugging. "We'll see. Long is more versatile."

"Harder to hide under a wig," he argued. "And damn annoying in the heat."

"Oh, and now you're suddenly a hair expert?" she laughed and he couldn't help but smile back at her. He'd never told her before, and probably never would, because he'd never made it a point to tell people how he felt about stuff like that, but he really loved her laugh. It reminded him of birthdays and Christmases and summers in the park; it reminded him of his mum one of her good days.

They were standing in front of Phil's door now, and Clint could hear music filtering through the door; something soft and old sounding. Natasha leaned forward to give him a quick one armed hug which he returned.

"Get in there, you've been pining for days," she said, her breath warm against his neck.

"I have not."

"Have too." She pulled away, mussing his hair before starting off down the hall. "Oh, and Clint?" she called, the smirk once more in place. "You might not have known this, but it doesn't take four hours to 'properly take your measurements'. After the first half hour, it's just an excuse to touch you."

He must've looked horrified because she broke out into laughter as she turned the corner, disappearing out of his line of sight. The archer thought back to all those hours he'd had to endure of hands touching him all over the place and shivered. He opened Phil's door without knocking and said: "I think I've been sexually harassed," by way of greeting.

* * *

><p>He'd heard that Clint had gotten back from Bangladesh in once piece, but Phil hadn't actually had time to see him other than shoo him out of his office when he'd had to take an important conference call. With the Avenger's Initiative finally getting off the ground and the Helicarrier finally being operational things were hectic to say the least. Unfortunately, Captain Rogers was still thawing out, and Tony Stark was digging his heals in about the whole team thing. Out of everyone, Thor had been the easiest to coordinate and Phil knew they had Jane Foster to thank for that, bless her heart. They were going to have to reimburse her for all those Poptarts.<p>

He'd gotten a notice from Medical saying that Clint and Natasha had both passed their physical and psychological evaluations which meant that they had officially been added to the Avenger's team roster. He'd also received a secondary message about Barton having regained his eidetic memory. He couldn't say he was completely surprised. He'd seen the way Clint could fly through reports and sprout off random facts, but he'd figured that Clint would tell him about it when he was ready. Apparently Fury had beaten him to the punch.

It was one of those days where the sky had clouded over, cold rain pounding the ground, making everything seen bleak and tired. No one had appeared in his doorway in the past twenty minutes, and all his paperwork was done so Phil decided he'd take a much deserved break. He along with the rest of SHIELD had been working nonstop since Captain American's discovery. It'd been the spark that had the Avenger's Initiative had really needed to get off the ground and everything had gone into overdrive. They'd had a few weeks to prepare, but the crews had finally managed to extract the Captain from the ice and now the clock was really ticking.

Coulson bit back a yawn as he loosened his tie, making his way over to his turntable that he kept in the corner. He picked a record at random, not really caring what he listened to at this point. The smooth voice of the clarinet began pouring from the speakers he'd had built into his walls as he flicked off the lights and sat himself down on Clint's couch, finally letting the tension bleed from his body.

He sighed as the door suddenly flew open but when he looked over he found a rather disturbed Clint standing there with some clothes tucked under his arm instead of an agent with more paperwork.

"I think I've been sexually harassed."

Was it even possible to miss someone as much as he'd missed Clint? He squinted over at the archer who was glowing in the light from the hall, and warmth that he hadn't known he'd lost spreading through Phil's stomach. Clint shut the door behind him, tossing the clothes he was carrying onto the desk as he made his way over.

"Sexually harassed, huh?" Phil joked, already knowing he'd waited too long to answer. Clint just smiled— and god he'd missed seeing it so much it hurt.

"Thought I'd find you in here doing work, not listening to music," Clint laughed and he hesitated for a moment before offering his hand. "Can't say I'm disappointed though."

Phil stared at the proffered hand, not sure what Clint was up to.

"Come on," the other man whined, waving his hand in front of his face. Phil finally sighed and grabbed hold, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. When he's standing Clint doesn't relinquish his hand, instead he entwines their fingers, and before he knew what was happening they were swaying.

"Dance with me," Clint smiled, his teeth flashing in the half light. Phil couldn't help but tense as he carefully wrapped an arm around archer's waist and suddenly they were so close that he could feel the warmth of Clint's skin through his shirt. He forced himself to relax as a forehead pressed into his shoulder and he heard a mumbling, "I've missed you" along with a drawn out sigh.

"It's been awhile," he nodded, tipping his head so that his cheek was resting on dirty-blonde hair. If he were in the mood to be critical, Phil would've wondered what exactly this was, seeing as even though he knew that on some level Clint returned his feelings, they'd never really talked about it, never mind gone on an official date. But after months of not even having the time to be in the same room as him, all Phil could think to do was hold Clint close and continue to sway along to the music.

"So I heard we're moving house," the archer said quietly, his face still pressed into Phil's shoulder.

"By next week things should be ready."

"I'll miss this office. My couch."

Coulson laughed at that. "I'm having it sent to my office in the new mansion. It's safe."

"Good," Clint huffed, his breath warm against his neck. They both fell silent as they continued to sway in the darkened office, the only light in the room coming from the open blinds, shadows chasing across the carpet as cars flitted by on the rain washed street. The music had a French flare to it and he felt Clint grin against his shoulder.

"I had no idea you liked French music so much," he whispered.

"He was Creole actually. I spent several years there in Paris after college," he replied quietly, listening to the crackle of the record. "It'd always been my dream."

And suddenly was he was remembering warm Paris nights spent walking along the Seine and the taste of cigarettes on his tongue.

"Huh. Was it everything you'd hoped for?"

"There were tourists and thieves everywhere and it smelled like urine more often than not."

Yes, everything and more.

Clint pulled back to look at him, a gentle smile playing across his face and he seemed to understand. "Liar. You loved it."

If it'd been anyone else Phil might've been scared that someone could read him so well.

Before he could say anything Clint had shoved his face into the crook of his neck, so Phil just closed his eyes as they swayed. And the next time he was stressed out, or wondering for the millionth time why he even put up with SHIELD, he'd remember how Clint's head had felt on his shoulder as they'd swayed together in his darkened office, the quiet notes of Sidney Bechet echoing off the walls around them.


	8. The Burden (of Both Me and You)

If someone ever bothered to ask Clint, he'd tell them that saving the world was, in fact, pretty damn awesome. It was all the shit that came after that was the problem.

He'd gone in treating it like any other mission he and Natasha had ever been on. Go in, kill the target, go home, write report, and go to bed. So yeah, it hadn't exactly gone like that this time, but in the end he'd still had to write the report and the sun was still shining and no evil overlords were in sight, so he counted it as a win. And if there'd been a moment when he and Tasha had looked at each other and known that they probably weren't coming out again. That this was it. The show was over; the curtain coming down on their grand finale of blood and pain; no encore, just rest. Well, they didn't really talk about it.

But in that moment, with their hands clasped tightly together, with her nails biting into his skin leaving crescents of red in their wake, he thought that if his heart hadn't already been so wrapped up in Phil, that he might've loved her. Not in the way he already did, but loved her in that deep all consuming way that ended in kids and a mortgage and a dog, and definitely not aliens. But the moment had passed, because the curtain was falling, but their act wasn't over and the show must go on— and then they'd lived.

They'd been left standing in the ruins of New York City surrounded by destruction and death, shrouded in a sudden cloying silence. And they'd laughed. Their eyes had met over a flaming police cruiser, the smell of gasoline pungent in their noses and they'd started laughing, ignoring how Bruce Banner was eyeing them like they were insane, or how Captain America was glaring and lecturing them on there being a 'time and a place', and they'd just laughed. Laughed until they had to lean on another so they wouldn't fall, because if they fell down then they wouldn't be getting back up.

They'd laughed over the alien guts on Natasha's boots and the smears of black blood all over his arms and face. They'd laughed about the jagged cuts that still welled with bright red and their aching muscles that throbbed in agony. They'd laughed and laughed until Phil had come and tucked them away into one of the few undestroyed cars, and then they'd laughed some more. It'd earned them hours of psych evals, but what did it matter? They'd just saved the world. The entire planet.

As a child Clint had often wondered what true happiness was, and he decided then that if it was real, this was it; elation. The feeling of knowing that your loved ones were safe; that they'd had your back; that you got to see them tomorrow.

It'd been amazing, but then the adrenaline had passed and as the population came out of shock, they'd had to deal with something they'd never even thought of: the media. They'd crawled like cockroaches out from under the rubble with cameras and microphones shouting questions and poking at wounds that hadn't even had time to heal over. They came from all over, interpreters on hand; from Japan, from Africa, from all over Europe. From everywhere. And while Stark basked in the attention, and Cap threw on a shy smile, Thor loved the attention, and no one bothered Bruce out of fear, Natasha and Clint clung to their protective shadows for all they were worth.

They stayed away from the flashing cameras and avoided any press conferences so even if the world at large knew they existed; no one could claim that they'd ever gotten a good look. And wouldn't you know it? They ate it up.

Tabloids printed stories about them having been caught up in an accident resulting in terrible deformities, others said that it was rumoured Black Widow was a redhead which obviously meant that she was really Pepper Pots. War criminals, socialites, the president and first lady; they were someone new every morning and then someone else by the evening.

"Wouldn't it be easier if you just let them see you?" Cap asked over breakfast one morning and Natasha and Clint both glared as they picked at their fruit.

"No."

"It's a big adjustment," Phil said from his place on Clint's right side. None of the other Avengers had asked about what was going on between them and he had a feeling that whatever the hell was going on with Stark and Cap had something to do with it.

Whatever worries Clint had had about not being able to see much of Phil once their new office and living arrangements had been sorted out had quickly disappeared once everything had settled down after the Loki Incident. It turns out that as their babysitter, Phil had to spend quite a bit of time at the mansion with them. Not that Clint was complaining; it meant that he could sprawl out on his couch in Phil's new (much nicer) office and make a nuisance of himself while Phil pretended to be annoyed with him

"To go from operating on a top secret basis to being hounded by the press. Give them time."

Steve hesitated for a moment before nodding and going back to making pancakes. He knew Cap meant well- he always meant well. He was fucking Captain America— but he was glad to put an end to that conversation. Clint bumped his shoulder against Phil's and returned the smile that was sent in his direction.

He knew Coulson had an apartment to go back to; that he was only around because Clint had needed him to be there. And after days of planning, he figured today was it. They'd been dancing around each other for...well years now as Natasha had been so kind as to point out the other day. And Clint knew they'd basically been dating for a long while, but he sort of wanted to make it official because then Phil would he his and he was kind of really nervous even though it didn't really make sense and oh God, what if he said no and—

"My friends," Thor called as he came into the kitchen and Clint could see ripples forming in his water whenever he took a step. "I bid thee good morn."

"Morning Thor," everyone chimed in.

"Clinton," the huge Asgardian called and seriously? Even his own mother had called him Clint. "Would you have a friendly bout with me on this beautiful day?"

"Ooohh," he drawled, clutching his head because a bout with Thor? Yeah, ow. "Sorry buddy, I've got plans with Phil today," he said on the fly, trying to look regretful. "Maybe Cap would be—?

Steve was subtly shaking his head, his shoulders stiff as he loaded his pancakes onto a plate. You knew it was bad when even Captain America wouldn't offer to take your place.

"I think we can postpone," Phil said blandly as he went to take a sip of his coffee. "You go have a friendly bout."

Thor perked up like a dog who'd just heard the magical word that was walk and before Clint could protest or call Phil a traitor he was being lifted from his chair and carried out of the room—Thor still hadn't grasped the whole personal boundaries thing; SHIELD was working on it.

"Come my friend, it shall be glorious," Thor assured him as everyone watched on with 'I'm glad that's not me' smiles on their faces.

Clint vaguely wondered when this had become his life.

* * *

><p>Phil had noticed how skittish Clint had been over the last few days, and while at first he'd blamed the new team and the pressure of the media, he'd come to realize that Clint was scheming something. He couldn't say what, but some hope had manifested in his heart and since then he'd been waiting.<p>

Moving into the mansion might've been the best thing they'd ever done for their relationship. With all the guest rooms Phil wound up staying over most nights after working late and every morning he'd wake up to Clint sitting at the island in the kitchen with a cup of coffee and a bowl of fruit. It was basically like living together but with training wheels.

So far the Initiative was an undeniable success although some team dynamics still had to work themselves out. Everyone's fears over Tony and Clint meeting had been unjustified- but only because Phil had hauled Clint away and Steve had grabbed Tony before they could start throwing punches. But lately they seemed to be bonding over a shared love of some show on Disney about two brothers on summer vacation. Without fail, at three o'clock every afternoon they'd be sitting on the couch together and generally wound up watching it on demand until they both fell asleep. Fury had dubbed it Nap Time.

Bruce got along well enough with everyone, but he'd clicked the most with Natasha. They both enjoyed getting up at the crack of dawn to do yoga and had quickly bonded over that and through her he'd gotten to know Clint- who also grudgingly joined them for yoga every morning. Natasha had been making him do it for three years now and old habits die hard.

Thor had no issues bonding with anyone after he talked them into either having a 'bout' or a drinking contest, Steve was, well Steve was Steve and no one couldn't like him. He and Tony had poked and prodded at one another for the first week but somewhere along the line the tension between them had taken on a more sexual nature and since then...well, Phil had stopped paying attention because he didn't need to know about their love lives. Leave it to Tony Stark to debauch a national icon.

It was supposed to be a secret so as to help the population ease into the idea that their hometown, apple pie, thank you ma'am, hero was in fact not only gay, but in a relationship with arguably American's most infamous man. Naturally, that meant the entire world knew about it. Fury hadn't been pleased.

("Have you ever had to deal with Oprah before?"

"I'm sorry sir?"

"Oprah. Have you ever had to deal with Oprah?"

"Uh, no, sir. I can't say I have."

"Well, I can now say I've had the abject pleasure, seeing as the woman has been calling me all day! She wants Rogers on a special to discuss him 'budding relationship'," Fury growled through the phone line.

"May I ask how she got your number?"

"It's Oprah, Coulson. That woman has ways and connections the likes of which you and I can only dream of."

"I don't know sir, it might be good PR to have Steve appear," he reasoned, tapping his pen against the pile of paperwork set in front of him.

"Have you ever watched Oprah?" the Director asked him flatly. "She will emotionally gut him in front of a live studio audience and display his innards on internationally broadcast television.")

But overall, the Avengers were gaining more and more momentum as a team and SHIELD was doing better than ever with the government pouring in funding and the Helicarrier proving to be a major success, not that Phil had spent much time on it himself. He'd needed to make sure everything with the team continued smoothly and he knew Clint hadn't been comfortable moving into close quarters with complete strangers so he'd figured another familiar face would help.

The archer had put up a cocky front for his new teammates but Phil had read the unease in the set of his shoulders and the way he'd only picked at his food most days in the beginning. He'd never been sure if Brandt had shared the problem or if it had something to do with those crucial weeks in Medical after they'd first transferred him from the IMF, but whenever Clint got anxious or stressed he had to watch what and how much he ate or it'd all come back up an hour later. Sometimes even out of the blue his stomach wouldn't be able to handle certain foods. It'd only taken a week of them all living under the same roof for a list to be taped to the fridge of things he couldn't have so that whoever was making dinner that night could consult it.

Phil had reasoned that it was sort of like owning a rare breed of dog- you couldn't just feed it anything. The only problem was Clint was in fact just like a dog, and would eat just about anything if it was put in front of him when he was hungry.

(Clint was kneeling on the floor, his shoulders flexing while he heaved into the toilet as Phil sat on the lip of the tub behind him, running a soothing hand over his back. With one last cough Clint sat back, his head settling on Phil's knee as he groaned.

"I feel better now."

If he hadn't sounded so pathetic or looked so small curled up on the floor Phil might've said I told you so, but instead he just ran a hand through Clint's hair that'd been flattened against his skull with sweat.

"You know you can't eat meatloaf."

"It was the first dinner Cap's made for us," Clint muttered tiredly, looking worn out and ready for bed despite it being only six-thirty. "I didn't want to hurt his feelings."

"I think he'd be a lot more upset if he knew you'd made yourself sick," Phil said softly.

Clint only hummed in answer, pale eyelids fluttering as he tried to shift into a more comfortable position on the floor.)

Phil watched trying to hide his smile behind his coffee cup as Clint was carried away with a pout firmly upon his face.

"Nice," Natasha scoffed. "Way to throw him under a bus you two."

Steve had the decency to look guilty as he picked at his pancakes, but Phil just smirked.

"Thor is just...a little much," the Captain admitted as he twirled his fork. "Especially this early in the morning."

Natasha rolled her eyes as she picked up Clint's abandoned watermelon. "Oh Captain my Captain."

"Clint will be fine," Phil assured him.

"Unless Thor steps on him," Natasha muttered innocently before biting into the piece of fruit she'd been examining.

"Stop."

"I'm not the one who just abandoned my boyfriend to—

"You two are together?" Steve asked curiously, a smile finally making its way back into his face.

"No."

"Not yet," Natasha sing songed and easily ducked the chunk of cantaloupe he tossed at her.

"Captain Rogers," JARVIS said suddenly. "There seems to a situation downtown. Reports are coming in of large unidentifiable creatures climbing out from the sewers."

Steven gently pushed aside his pancakes, no longer hungry. "Alright, call everyone would you?"

In a few weeks Phil would look back on that morning and wish that they'd never gotten that call. It'd all been inevitable really, but he wouldn't be able to help but wish that Clint had gotten the chance to ask him out before everything fell apart. He would've liked to have kissed him...just once.

* * *

><p>Ethan hadn't exactly been following the story of the Avengers, but like every other person on the planet he was aware of them. He'd seen the news coverage and the front page stories and he'd watched a few interviews of Captain America here and there because, come on, it was Captain America. But he still didn't quite understand why the entire world seemed to be going crazy over new footage someone had managed to capture during one of their battles.<p>

"It's because no one's ever really seem them," Benji explained, eyes glued to the screen. "People have been going crazy trying to figure out what they look like."

"People just want to know if they're hot," Jane chuckled as she settled on the couch beside them.

"Well yeah, that too."

The news anchor was going over the battle in New York, but a bright red ribbon of text along the bottom of the screen was still proclaiming about breaking footage they'd gotten from an anonymous source.

"In related news," the woman continued, shuffling her papers the way they always did. "We have received exclusive footage from an anonymous source today which contains the first look at the elusive Avengers: Black Widow and Hawkeye. Before now, both had remained unseen by the public at large and rumours over their identities have been speculated by bloggers, journalists, and politicians alike. Let's take a look."

The footage was shaky in a way that indicated it'd been taken on a cell phone, but it was clear enough that they could easily make out the two Avengers perched on a roof overlooking the ongoing battle.

"Well that's bullocks," Benji growled disappointedly. "You can't even make out their faces."

The camera lowered to face the ground as whoever was holding it started running.

"Well at least we know she's really a redhead," Jane said. "Although who knows if that's even natural."

The two men rolled their eyes as they continued watching. The camera came up again, zooming in to rest on Hawkeye who was now alone on the roof, taking aim at something off screen. This time his features were clearly visible and Ethan stared at the television screen, his eyes wide as his brain struggled to process what he was seeing. It took him a moment, for where'd he'd seen those features to click. His heart stuttered in his chest, the sound loud in his ears as his lungs struggled to regain the air that seemed to have been knocked out of them.

It-it was Will. His Will.

Before he realized what he was doing he was kneeling in front of the television trying to get a better look. He could make out Will's eyes and face, even if his shoulders had become broader since the last time he'd seen him. His build might've changed a little, but it was still undeniably Will.

He turned to look at Benji and Jane, both of whom were watching the screen closely as well.

Jane seemed to know what he was thinking and started cautiously saying, "Ethan...it could be anyone. The footage is shaky, he's far off. Up close it could be nothing but a passing resemblance."

Ethan turned back to the broadcast and watched as Will took a running leap off the roof he'd occupied only to be caught midair by Iron Man.

"No way that's Brandt," Benji joked weakly, shaking his head. "He could barely jump down that shaft without having a bloody aneurism."

"He knew Iron Man would catch him."

"He knew I would catch him," the Brit sniffed. "And he still had a conniption."

"Your track record on the mission wasn't exactly stellar," Jane pointed out. "And it was the first time he'd ever met you. I would've had some reservations as well. But, Ethan," she continued softly. "Think about it. Will is gone. We all wish it wasn't true, but it is. We know you miss him, but that man isn't him. He might look like him a bit, but he's not our Will."

"Did you see him die?" Hunt shot back angrily, getting to his feet.

"You know none of us—

"Then we can't be sure," he said, clinging to the hope- the chance that Will was out there. All along he'd been out there. Just waiting to be found. Waiting to be brought back home where he belonged.

"This wouldn't be the first time the IMF has lied about the status of one of their agents."

"He could be undercover," Benji piped up, earning a glare from Jane. "Deep cover within SHIELD."

Ethan nodded, his eyes bright. "Yes."

"But why fake his death? Or disavow him?" Jane protested, watching as the rest of her team set to work. "If he was just undercover they wouldn't have bothered."

"Benji," Ethan barked out as he grabbed his own laptop off the coffee table. "Check the IMF database and see what's going on."

The redhead nodded and Jane huffed in annoyance as she was basically ignored, but even she couldn't deny the spark of hope in a part of her heart she'd thought she'd buried along with everything to do with Will.

* * *

><p>"Um...guys?"<p>

Jane and Ethan both turned to find Benji looking annoyed and more than a little bit confused.

"There's uh...no file on Brandt. And no sign that there's ever been one."

"Could Will not be his real name?" Jane hazarded a guess as she set down the bottle of water she'd been nursing as she re-watched the footage on YouTube.

"Why would he have changed his name?"

"Some do," she shrugged. "The IMF used to encourage it, but I've only ever met older agents who actually did it. The regulations were changed eventually."

"Do you know when exactly?"

"They changed around when I was recruited," Ethan said, looking up from his work. "The offer was made to change it, but they told me it was completely optional and being phased out."

"Well, no offence to you, but you're quite a bit older than Will. He wouldn't have been recruited until awhile after the regulations changed," Jane pointed out.

"With his memory he could've been recruited quite young," Benji argued.

"It could have been for personal reasons," Ethan sighed, tiredly running a hand over his face. "He wasn't one to talk about his childhood, but what I got was that it wasn't exactly happy and it ended with him and his brother being on the outs."

Benji was still clicking away on his laptop, surrounded by wires and half empty mugs of tea that he'd had room service fetch for him as he said, "Well, doesn't really matter if it was by his own personal request, or if the IMF encouraged him at this point. Either way, his permanent file will be under his real name. And unless we know it...This could take a very long while."

"But wouldn't he have a file under Hawkeye with SHEILD?" Jane asked. "Couldn't you just hack in and find it?"

Benji paled at her words and the almost continuous clicking of his mouse and clack of his fingers on the keys stopped. The room seemed strangely quiet without it.

"You- You want me to hack into a system designed by Tony bloody Stark?" He asked incredulously, voice strangely reverent.

"If that's what it takes," Ethan said, his eyebrow quirked as he stared over at his oddly still teammate.

"He is our God."

Jane snorted. "Whose God?"

"Us," Benji practically yelped. "Techies. I know some people who pray to him before they start a project."

Jane shared a glance with Ethan, whose eyebrows had disappeared into his hairline.

"I once attended a lecture of his...and he was brilliant. Completely and utterly pissed, but brilliant. I'd never seen a man drink that much vodka and still be able to discuss—

"Alright," Ethan laughed in way they hadn't heard in years. "We get it. He's your God. Can you do it?"

Benji thought for a moment, his thumb tapping against the table. "I'd have to say, probably not."

Ethan gave him a disbelieving look.

"What? This is Tony Stark we're talking about here! He's been programming since he was a child. And while I'll admit I am indeed brilliant by most people's standards, I'm not Tony Stark brilliant."

Ethan hummed as he thought. "I know someone who might be able to give you a hand."

"Oh no, Hunt!" Luther yelled, shaking his head furiously on the video feed. "The last time you asked me to do you a favour I almost got my ass blown to kingdom come!"

"That was purely coincidental," Ethan smiled at the screen.

"It's happened every single time I've ever laid eyes on you!"

"Well, this time it's a simple enough job. You can do it wirelessly. And don't even try to play coy. You had a blast."

"What's in it for me?"

"My eternal gratitude?" he asked hopefully.

Luther stared at him with narrowed eyes. "Yeah, that's not going to cut it. You know how the IMF pays. If I'm doing a side job for you, it'd better be worth my while."

"I have a line on some software you could be interested in. Military grade of course." That was a complete lie; but fake it til you make it and all that jazz.

"Alright, say let's just say that I'm interested," the other agent said, leaning back in his chair to grab a glass of water he'd set aside. "What exactly is this about?"

"I need you to help a member of my team hack into SHIELD's database." Timing had always been a skill of his which meant that Luther choked on his water and managed to spill most of it down his shirt.

"Are- Are you kidding me?!"

"Do I look like I'm kidding to you?" he asked, face straight. "I wouldn't be asking if I wasn't desperate."

"This is Stark tech we're talking about," Luther said, shaking his head as he set down his glass. "One doesn't simply hack into anything designed by Tony Stark. He's practically the God of—

"Yeah, yeah, I've been hearing this all day. You guys pray to him apparently."

"Damn right we do. And now he's got that crazy ass battle suit with tank missiles and the blasters and— This is crazy! I'm too old for this. Hell,you're too old for this!"

"Luther,please. I'm really— This is personal," he said finally. "I'm actually begging you right now to help me. Please."

Luther was quiet for a moment, obviously thinking things over before he let out a long sigh. "Fine. But only because the great Ethan Hunt is begging. Anyone else and I'd be sending them packing."

"Thank you," Ethan said, pouring all his relief and his gratitude into those two words.

"Now, grab your tech guy so we can get to work."

It took Benji and Luther the better part of a week, hundreds of conference calls and endless hours of Skyping, but eventually they managed to hack into SHIELD's agent database and retrieve the file of one Code Name: Hawkeye.

"What's it say?" Ethan called, quickly coming in from the kitchen of the house that he'd been renting since the apartment.

"It's an interesting read," Benji admitted as he scrolled down. "Clint Barton ring any bells?"

Ethan shook his head as Jane came down the stairs, towelling her hair dry.

"What'd you find out?" she asked, folding the towel and setting it aside as she took a seat beside him on the couch.

"Well, going by the picture, it's definitely Will. Or his twin. Clint Francis Barton, code name: Hawkeye. Parents deceased, has a brother named Barney who's former FBI turned rogue under the alias of Trick Shot, current location unknown."

"That would explain the name change," Jane said disbelievingly. "I'd want to stay clear of him too."

"They both joined the circus when they were fourteen, and they must've gone off the grid because there's nothing in here about him until enlists at twenty," Benji continued. "Long service record, a lot of commendations. And I mean a lot. Was a Navy Seal before he was recruited by the CIA for their Special Activities Division. The rest of his service record is redacted until six years ago when he was recruited by SHIELD. Was designated to their London base until three years ago when he was reassigned stateside and partnered with codename Black Widow. They've got a long list of assassinations and covert operations under their belt. Both were put up for consideration for the Avengers Initiative and were included in the roster one year ago."

"But that's not possible," Ethan said. "He'd been with IMF for six years. He told me so himself."

"Obviously the information has been tampered with," Benji conceded with a shrug. "Which means someone is trying to hide the fact that Will- Clint- whoever, is ex-IMF."

"Anything else useful in there?"

Benji sighed as he hit the basic physical profile section. "Not really. Height, weight, um...nothing really...oh."

"What?" Ethan asked, leaning in to get a look.

"There's a report from their Medical division. Apparently, there was an accident three years ago resulting in a traumatic brain injury. There's pages worth of information," the Brit breathed anxiously. "Retrograde Amnesia, personality changes, trouble with impulse control, and episodes of paranoia, and severe anxiety as well as seizures."

Ethan practically collapsed into the nearest armchair looking tired, but so, so relieved.

"It's him," he breathed, head in his hands. "It's really him."

"After what happened in London they must've transferred him to SHIELD," Jane said. "Whatever state he'd been in, they didn't want him anymore. But apparently someone else did."

"They only ever saw him as an analyst," Ethan spat, resentment beginning to build in his chest, boiling away the flood of relief. "With that sort of trauma he'd never be able to remember all the information they needed from him. So those bastards got rid of him."

"So he doesn't remember us, that's why he didn't come looking for us once he was better," Benji said as he saved a copy of the file and pressed print to make a hardcopy just in case.

"They lied to us. All of us!" Ethan growled, lurching out of his seat. "Benji, get online and book us tickets to New York."

"But Ethan," Jane protested. "We can't just barge in and—

"Watch me," he snarled as he began gathering up his things. "I've wasted three years of my life thinking he was dead! I won't sit around when I know he's still out there! Don't...don't ask me to do that," he said, looking pained.

"We're going to New York and we're finding him. That's our new mission."


End file.
